I have edited the answer wiki, but finding that my edits have been “submitted for review”, and being mistrustful, I am posting my current understanding here. I will update this (and, if I am allowed to, the Answer Wiki) as more initiatives come to light; Didier Szende is working on a solution.

---

All solutions are vulnerable to the frequent changes in the Quora UI, and need to be updated frequently. All solutions are vulnerable to Quora detecting multiple downloads from the same IP address, and blocking access by that IP address, which may mean you can no longer access Quora: do not use solutions that download multiple links in parallel.

• t3nsor/quora-backup is Python code that works well, but is restricted to the command line. (As of this writing only forks of Brian Bi’s code work, because of changes to Quora HTML: opoudjis/quora-backup, dda/quora-backup.)
• Free Your Stuff is an open source Chrome extension (still in beta) that downloads your contributions to supported websites, including Quora (answers only at this point). It also lets you re-publish them into the public domain if you so choose. See detailed answer below. (There were problems with very large answer sets prior to version 0.3.19; if you’re affected, try again with the latest version.)
• How to back up all your quora answers to your computer by Robert Walker on Random things describes an approach to spidering Quora content (downloading all of it), which is what quora-backup and Free Your Stuff do, but without cleaning up and stripping down the downloaded HTML files as they do. Strongly recommend throttling the interval between downloads, to a few seconds.
• Mehul Mohan’s answer to Can you download all Quora answers from one person? does the same thing of downloading all content from within the browser, using Javascript. I suspect it might run out of memory quickly.

---

And a review (out of scope I think of an Answer Wiki):

If you’re comfortable with the command line, the Python solutions work, though I’ve only ever downloaded 1000 answers at a time. Bad idea, btw, since the HTML can change radically between different times of download, even with the solutions that strip out HTML noise.

If not, try Free My Stuff; I couldn’t get it to go past 1k when I time, but the developer has reported that is fixed. He’s also annoyed because the HTML keeps changing; that’s why I recommend my fork of Brian’s code over his original.

Walker’s solution does what the others do for downloading content, but it makes me anxious, in case it accidentally downloads links in parallel, or too quickly. Be familiar with your spidering software’s configurations before using it.

The advice being given on this question by other answers is 3 years out of date.

Nick Nicholas’ answer to How can one contact the Quora Content Review? As in something like private messages or something?

Christopher VanLang has indicated the only way to stop QCR edit warring you is to report its action as a bug. That, at least, will actually get looked at by a human. I can report that it’s stopped a couple of my edit wars with QCR.

InB4 Dimitris Almyrantis

The good news for you, OP, is that not only have I read up a fair bit on conversions of Greeks to Catholicism or Islam, I’ve even published academically on the subject.

The bad news is, I’m familiar with a number of circumstances where Greeks did or didn’t convert, but 13th century Greece is not one of them.

What I’m going to do though is answer the more general question: Why did Greeks convert or not convert, to Catholicism or Islam, between the 13th and the 18th century. I will build a framework which I will apply to the dozen cases I know. And then I’ll flippantly say, “oh, Greeks under the Latin Empire must have been like X.”

The framework:

There are four scenarios, I believe, for Greeks converting or not. The following wording is for conversion to Catholicism; you can change it to conversion to Islam, by replacing “heretic” with “infidel”.

1. The Homeland Scenario. “There shall be no damned heretics on our home turf! It is an insult to God! (Or: to our geopolitics.) Convert them immediately, and don’t be gentle about it!”
1. Outcome: Conversion.
2. The Colonial Scenario. “There are too goddamn many heretics in this god-forsaken outpost, for us to convert. And besides, keeping a bunch of heretics around is useful. Someone has to do the work around here. We’ll just clip their wings to make sure their leadership don’t get too uppity.”
1. Outcome: No Conversion, but Restriction in power of Orthodox Clergy. Potentially, Only Nominal Conversion, to Byzantine Rite Catholicism. (Yes, the doctrine and the ecclesiastical authority are Catholic. But only priests know the difference. The Mass still looks Greek Orthodox.)
3. The Imperial Scenario. “We’re running an empire here: we have better things to do than act as missionaries. Having their leadership be uppity is a feature, not a bug. They can run the heretics’ affairs on our behalf.”
1. Outcome: No Conversion, a measure of autonomy granted.
4. The Grassroots Scenario. “We’ve seen no help from our clergy, and we’ve seen plenty of help from their clergy. You know what? Defending our creed is not worth the effort. We’ll go with them.”
1. Outcome: Conversion.

Now to apply the framework.

• Turkey, 12th century. Imperial Scenario. I don’t know much about the Seljuk empire, but I know they didn’t run around converting Greeks to Islam.
• Turkey, 13th century. Mixed Homeland/Colonial Scenario. The emirates that succeeded the Seljuks were not running an empire, but individual small states, so they did not feel like taking the relaxed big picture. There was fervent missionary work undertaken by them, as I’ve documented elsewhere, although the presence of Christianity in Western Anatolia did not collapse until the 15th century. And in the meantime, the capital tax on Christians was in fact their major source of income. So initially more of a colonial scenario, then later more of a homeland scenario.
• Crete, 14th century. Colonial Scenario. Crete is a colony of Venice, and a rebellious one at that. Conversion is too hard work. But the local Orthodox population is denied senior clergy (there were no Orthodox bishops permitted on the island, the nearest bishop was in Modon on the Peloponnese). They are the underclass, working class, and lower middle class that keep things running and generating income for Venice and its feudal landholders.

  I’ve written elsewhere about the poet Stephanos Sahlikis (Ooh! He Said ‘Fuck’! He must be a revolutionary! by Nick Nicholas on Opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr In Exile). Sahlikis belonged to one of the three indigenous Cretan clans that had converted to Catholicism, and were allowed to own fiefs as well. Venice accepted the necessity of coopting locals to Catholicism: it ran out of Italians to run their fiefs, and it needed to reward locals who helped them suppress the constant local revolts. But it didn’t want too many turncoats; they weren’t about to enfranchise the entire serf population that made Crete profitable.

  The division between Catholic and Orthodox had eased off somewhat by the 16th century, when Crete was less a colony and more a province of Venice; so the scenario would have crept towards Imperial. It didn’t creep far: the local peasantry resented their forced labour (Corvée) to the end, and welcomed the Ottomans as liberators.

• Greece and Northern Turkey, 15th century. Imperial Scenario. The Ottoman Empire pretty much wrote the book on this, with its Millet system. Not only was the senior Orthodox clergy retained in the newly conquered Orthodox territory of Greece and the Pontus, it administered Christians’ affairs on behalf of the Empire. As long as the Empire got what it needed (tax, troops through Devshirme), the infidels were rarely pressured to convert to Islam. Of course (Grassroots Scenario) some Greeks sought conversion as advantageous to them, but it did not become the norm.
• Northeastern Turkey, 17th century. Homeland Scenario?. There were a few exceptions of deliberate Islamisation. The Islamisation of Albania and Bosnia was in order to subdue a particularly rebellious population; that’s not quite a “home turf” scenario, but it is a scenario in which Orthodoxy had been identified as an administrative liability. The Of Valley was also Islamised, in the 17th century: Greek is still spoken there, but the population is renowned as devoutly Muslim. I don’t know why Islamisation was pursued there, but securing the region would make sense, particularly if neighbouring Georgia and Russia was a concern.
• Central Italy, 17th century. Homeland Scenario. A number of colonies of Greeks from Mani were established in Italy in the 17th century. Conversion to Latin Rite Catholicism was a precondition on settlement. Some colonists resisted it, but they were not able to resist it long. The Homeland Scenario was how Europe worked in the 17th century: Cuius regio, eius religio was how the warfare between Protestants and Catholics was resolved. The ruler got to decide which religion was allowed. And anyone who deviated from what the ruler decided, didn’t get to deviate for long.
• Southern Italy, 17th century. Mixed Colonial/Homeland Scenario. This description I’m somewhat less comfortable with, but: the Orthodox population of Southern Italy (ethnic Greek and Albanian) were pressured into adopting Byzantine Rite, and eventually Latin Rite. The same degree of coercion that was applied in Central Italy couldn’t be applied in the south, because of the far greater number of Orthodox; and (speculating) because of the political situation: the Spanish rulers of Naples could not coopt the local Catholic population as effectively to apply peer pressure.

  Eventually, a critical mass point was reached, and the Homeland scenario switched in. In fact, it’s the Albanians in Southern Italy, not the Greeks, who have held out and retained Byzantine Rite.

• Corsica, 17th–18th century. Colonial Scenario. The Greek settlers were another bunch of colonists from Mani, but they held off from real assimilation for two to three centuries. They had a number of factors that made that possible. The initial factor was that, while Rome considered Corsica its home turf, and pressed heavily for conversion, Genoa was running Corsica as an outpost, and it needed the Greeks on side to help control the rebellious locals. So Genoa consistently tried to work around the pressure coming from Rome.

  The Greeks, for that matter, were too damn many: they had their own monastery of monks preaching anti-Catholic rhetoric, and they were well armed (forming later on the armed elite of Ajaccio—a Greek sponsored Napoleon to go to military school). And assimilation was off the table for a very long time; when Corsicans asked them to join their revolt against Genoa in 1729, the Greeks laughed them off as goats and Vlachs. (Proper meaning: Aromanian-speakers. Secondary meaning: highlander hillbillies. Maniot meaning: lowlander peasants.)

• Crete, 17th century. Grassroots Scenario. A massive proportion of Cretans converted to Islam; by 1800, it was half the island. I’m sure there’s research now about why, and I’m sure there wasn’t research a generation ago, when I was reading history. The initial impetus must have been the peasantry’s relief at being freed from forced labour—something that the Orthodox low-ranking clergy had been powerless to help them with.
• Florida, 18th century. Grassroots Scenario. The New Smyrna colony was meant to be yet another Maniot colony, with Maniots from Corsica joining in. The boats took off for Florida from Minorca (British-ruled at the time), and every Minorcan who could jumped on board. The Maniots mostly died of malaria, and there was no Orthodox clergy on board; the maladministered colony was thus Greco-Corsican and Minorcan. On Corsica, the Greeks loathed Catholics. In Florida, they gained succour from Catholic clergy. When Florida went back to Spanish rule and conducted a census of New Smyrna, only one colonist (from Crete, I believe) said he considered himself Orthodox.

That was a lot of fun, even though I’m embarrassed I don’t know what happened in the Of valley.

So. The Latin Empire of the 13th century.

• Not Homeland Scenario. The Crusaders were a long, long way from France, and didn’t have the critical mass of local Catholics, or the means, to convert the locals by force or forceful encouragement.
• Not Grassroots Scenario. There was some intermarriage, and the Greek version of the Chronicle of the Morea was written by a gasmule, a product of such intermarriage: he clearly identifies with French interests, and attacks Orthodox Greeks consistently. But the Latin Empire and its successor statelets likely couldn’t have even offered the locals the incentives Venice grudgingly did, to encourage conversion. They were not rich, and not well-defended; they were hanging on for dear life in the Levant.

That leaves the Imperial Scenario (we’ll benignly leave the Greeks to their own affairs) and Colonial Scenario (we’re happy to leave the Greeks as an underclass).

I’m sure the Latin Empire would have liked to exploit the Greek peasantry, and curtail their heretic clergy, just like Venice did in Crete. I just don’t think they had the wherewithal or the nous to do it. Too inexperienced in colonialism and imperialism, too far from home, too embattled. I think they ended up in the Imperial Scenario—where you don’t bother converting the locals: not as a gesture of magnanimity born of strength, the way Mehmed II devised it, but as a gesture of pragmatism born of weakness.

I’m pretty sure there won’t be a fixed amount, and that there’s some degree of discretion.

I have sighted the final appeal response for a ban to one user, who got counts of moderation sanctions in response. Their count was 39 BNBRs. I don’t know if that includes successfully appealed BNBRs or not.

I’ve seen the number 4 mentioned in variants of this question for blocking. I have had 4 BNBRs, but 3 appealed successfully (eventually).

EDIT: Matthew Bates is a data point for 4 BNBRs; I’m a data point for it being 4 BNBRs appealed unsuccessfully:

I’ve been edit-blocked for a week for my fourth BNBR violation. This one came from an answer I wrote over a month ago that already had over 1.2k upvotes.

I do believe someone is trolling me… reporting everything I write and seeing what sticks.

Anyway, I’m going to use this time to work on some other projects. If you’re wondering why I don’t say anything for the next week, that’s why.

Originally Answered:

Does any Quoran actually like the elimination of question details?

From the comments to the blog post announcing it: at least 3. From one of several questions about it: at least 8. Not all of them are Marc Bodnick.

I wrote the following to identify whether there were any recurring characteristics among them. And yes, I know perfectly well that it’s a ridiculously low number to say anything about.

• Who likes Quora Without Details by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency
• Stats of Who likes Questions Without Details by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency

No.

Protest it or boycott it, not because it will change things. It won’t. We are all fungible; we are all blips on a chart to Quora. How could we not be? Quora isn’t in the making its users happy business. It’s in the content providing business. And the content is going to keep rolling in anyway.

Protest it or boycott it, not because Quora will listen to you. They won’t.

(I’ve had a user confide to me that Quora only listens to a “handful” of users. There’s a handful of users that enthusiastically approve of the change, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence: they’re aligned to Quora’s goals, and that’s why they have Quora’s confidence.)

Protest it or boycott it, if you are going to do so, only in order to say “not in my name.” Quora doesn’t care about what you do about something you don’t like here. But you should.

And remember not to thank them for it, or doff your cap and say “I’m sure they know what we want best.” Quora did this because to them, it’s just business. Our relationship with Quora Inc. should likewise be just business. Otherwise we’re setting ourselves up for gratuitous heartbreak.

The question is amusing to me, given that part of Quora’s raison d’être is to sift bad knowledge from good knowledge, via both credentials and the wisdom of the crowds. See A Breakdown of Mills Baker’s Answer: Democratizing Access (Pt 1/2) by Ryan Q.Y. See on The Insurgency (much more readable than the original, though longer).

While Quora wants to democratise the production of knowledge, outside of the bastion of academia and Wikipedia, it also wants to act as a corrective to bad knowledge available online. And Quora engineers, if asked, will tell you that conspiracy theories are an exemplar of that; read the post.

And yet, Quora has awarded Top Writer to a proponent of a variant of the Phantom time hypothesis (Roman and Early Mediaeval History as we know it is a fiction perpetrated by mediaeval scribes).

It’s no more a magnet, I suspect, than other forums disseminating knowledge online. Where Wikipedia uses the cudgel of original research to block it (and in the process blocks a whole lot of stuff it shouldn’t—celebrities can’t correct their own middle names on Wikipedia, unless there’s a published source corroborating it), Quora is meant to use the gentle corrective of bots and machine learning.

It’s gentle enough that crap will get through, and that does not exempt the reader from the onus of being sceptical of anything that sounds crazy. And yes, sometimes people really are wrong, and people shouldn’t have to waste time proving to “sceptics” the entire body of work of a discipline.

BNBR is a deeply problematic notion. It can be reactionary, it can certainly have a chilling effect. In this regard though… I don’t see a way around it that will not shut down too much besides it.

In bots we trust *sigh*

This is a special shout-out to … oh, I can’t notify the head of Quora ontology, because he’s blocked me.

OK, those are the fortunes of war. Fine. This is a special shout-out to the rest of you.

So I start creating a topic for my home suburb: Oakleigh. I start typing and see “Oakleigh East, Victoria” and “Oakleigh South, Victoria”, and I figure, “oh, ok, better make it “Oakleigh, Victoria”.

Topic created. I can’t tell Quora that this is a town, because I don’t have topic admin privileges. Fair enough, the great unwashed can’t be trusted with ontology is-a statements; you have to be a certified accredited topic gnome (presumably not blocked by relevant staff) to do that kind of thing. If I was the head of Quora ontology, I’d do the same, I guess.

I try to make Oakleigh, Victoria a child of Melbourne.

Melbourne’s blocked, because blocked topics are a thing, and you have to be a certified accredited topic gnome (presumably not blocked by relevant staff) to edit blocked topics.

OK, that’s how they play, let’s see if I can work around it.

Oh, so all the suburbs of Melbourne are listed as children of the parent of Melbourne, Cities and Towns in Victoria.

Not how I woulda done it, but I see the argument, today’s exurb is tomorrow’s suburb, cool.

I make Oakleigh, Victoria a child of Cities & Towns in Victoria.

And I notice that cities & towns in Victoria are all suffixed “, Victoria, Australia.”

OK, I’d better fix that then. Rename Oakleigh, Victoria to Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia.

Computer says No. Topic already exists.

I search the topic Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia in the search box. No result.

So if there’s no topic there… why can’t I rename Oakleigh, Victoria to Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia?

Have you guessed the answer yet?

I didn’t; I gave up, and created my question anyway with the topic I was able to use. I also recounted the story to Miguel Paraz, who was looking forward to my patisserie recommendation.

Miguel has been here longer than me. And he guessed what I didn’t.

https://www.quora.com/topic/Oakl… : the topic was there just fine. The Quora Topic Bot had deleted it.

Although even when Miguel restored the topic, it still doesn’t show up in autocomplete.

So. There’s a range of things that could be a bug or a feature:

• That the Quora Topic Bot doesn’t think my suburb exists.
• That the Quora Topic Organizer doesn’t tell me why I can’t rename my topic to a deleted topic.
• That the Quora Topic Merger doesn’t tell me why I can’t merge my topic to a deleted topic.
• That the Quora UX doesn’t tell me that “, Victoria” as a suffix instead of “, Victoria, Australia” is considered harmful.
• That the Quora UX lets you undelete a topic, but doesn’t add it to autocomplete, so you can’t use an undeleted topic.

Seriously, these may be bugs, or they may be features. I cannot tell any more.

And then there’s these more human-oriented bugs or features.

• That Quora staff can refuse input from people who might, occasionally, be trying to help.

Seriously. Quora staff are users, and as users they can tune out whoever they like; but they are also Quora staff. I’m not convinced that, as staff, they should get to do that. A topic gnome of much longer standing than me constantly has to ask others to do things on their behalf at the Topic Gnomery blog, because they’ve been blocked too. I don’t believe that’s the most efficient way to do topic administration.

I don’t know to what extent any of these are:

I do know that after this week of DeleteDetails-palooza and BadHombreBot-geddon, I have an unusually low patience for the opacity of this UX, even by my standards.

Quora Obtrudes by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency, I wrote last week. Quora gets in the way of me doing what I want to do here.

Quora now even gets in the way of me trying to help them.

I got the message, Quora. If you don’t want my help, I’m not helping you. I’ll leave the gnoming to others.

If a lot of people boycott answering questions (perhaps for a day or 2) to protest Quora’s decision to remove details, would they put them back? is a question with a non-zero number of respondents who have blocked me.

I can’t comment on their responses. Of course.

I can’t comment on their comments to their responses. Of course.

What strikes me as confusing is, I can’t comment on anyone else’s comments to their response. Same goes for posts they post on their blogs.

Is this deliberate, because they should not be exposed to any content that is a child of their “story”? Even though they won’t get a notification of it?

And yet, they’ll see my content as a child of someone else’s “story”, if we’re both commenting on it.

Insert meme here: I can’t tell if this was deliberate, or just easier to program.

At Kat’s prompting, I’m writing a positive rather than negative essay, on what keeps me on Quora, and I invite you all to do the same; it will help us put our disgruntlements into proper context, and enable a better cost–benefit analysis for us.

Done as a video, because I have a headache. You guys don’t have to do so. Posts here welcome.