Stats of Who likes Questions Without Details

Konstantinos has suggested the following in regard to the previous post:

You should look at the the number of Edits in the users’ profiles and the ratio of “Answers vs Questions.” I bet you that people who don’t tend to post questions and may also have lots of edits love the simplified Questions. It may also be related to what Topics each user follows.

I’m comparing the 8 pro writers with the top 9 writers currently (minus the 8th writer who is pro).

I have already speculated that tech vs humanities is a reason why Tikhon Jelvis thinks this change makes Quora become more like Medium, and I think it becomes more like Stack Exchange. FWIW, of the 8 pro writers, 4 write on tech topics, but 6 have tech day jobs.

(I’ll list them, notwithstanding the fear of BNBR, because I am not saying any of this to insult them: Michael Vogel, Katherine Rossiter, Marc Bodnick, Konstantinos Konstantinides, Travis Addair, Tikhon Jelvis, Marcus Geduld, Stefan Heaton.)

For the top contra writers (Robert Walker, Scott Danzig, Todd Allen, Kim Aaron, Mike Prinke, Garry Taylor, Rob Fletcher, Joseph Haynes Kyle): 5 write on tech topics, 7 have tech day jobs.

I think that’s a wash.

As to stats:

Of the pro writers, Bodnick and you, Kosta, have an overwhelming number of edits: 287k and 124k. The most prolific of the top 8 contra is Scott Danzig at 26k; and Vogel and Geduld among the pro writers exceed him. Of course there are prolific contra writers down the list (Peter Flom at 44k, for example); but you may be onto something there.

Few writers post questions, proportionately. The only writer who wrote more questions than answers is Bodnick. You may well be onto something there too: Pro writers, Answer:Question ratio: 3. Contra writers: 23. Then again, maybe not: removing Bodnick (who may well have regarded seeding questions of the type Quora wanted as part of his day job), Pro writers Answer:Question ratio becomes 68.

The average Answer:Question ratio for pro writers is 183, and for contra writers is 372. Discounting Bodnick, the average is 209.

This is not good stats. But… maybe.

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