Just got this misfeature in my feed today.

I know why they’re doing it: they’re explaining, more prominently, why an item has shown up in your feed. Because items show up for social networking reasons, they’re emphasising the social network connections back to you (the follower, the commenter, the topic) over the author. Because, apparently, now the UI team has decided Quora is social media after all.

Yes, I think it’s as idiotic as all the other continuous and never-ending tweaks to the UI. If there’s meant to be a difference between header and footer information, this is obviously less important information that belongs in the footer. Less important than WHO WROTE THE ANSWER, FFS.

And using the same icon for commenting and writing? When I have to squint to make out the author icon to begin with? Really?

There have been, like, two changes to the feed in the past year that have improved my experience. This is yet another one that hasn’t. I do want to know why an item is in my feed. And this was not the way to do it.

EDIT: in the latest iteration, the relative sizes of the icons are more sensible.

Was it my unhumble contribution that led to this reversal? Ah, who can tell…

Originally Answered:

Why has Quora changed the feed layout to show the icon of the topics above the question (October 2016)?

The motivation, I guess, is to foreground the topic classification of feed items over all other aspects of the item.

I would have rolled out a variant of this, where topic icons appear only over questions.

The topic icons are the least noxious aspect of this current variant.

See also Why are YouTube comments so bad?

Yonatan Gershon’s answer substantially covers the differences:

Quora’s comments are much, much better. Both because of more well-thought-out methods of enforcement, and because Quora is a smaller platform upon which to attempt meritocracy.

In addition, for all that Quora likes to distance itself from being social media, it’s more social than YouTube. Following and exchanges are built in to the fabric of Quora much more than YouTube, where interactions are pepper spray. So there are less social repercussions on being an arsehole there; the absence of BNRB enforcement on YouTube is a symptom, not (just) a cause.

And, again for all that Quorans often differentiate answers and comments, answers and comments are part of the same fabric on Quora: exchange of ideas. On YouTube, the point is the broadcasting of media; it’s democratised, but it’s only occasionally two-way. The comments are not part of the same fabric, they’re more incidental. So they don’t attract much care and thought to begin with.

That said, YouTube’s much larger size would defeat any but the most numbskulled attempts at moderation.

What Yonatan Gershon said in his answer:

I give you free reign to be an asshole, until you abuse that privilege.

I hate blocking and deleting comments. As I’ve said elsewhere (hello Clarissa; yes, Jae, I did finally give in and follow you), I know that it’s easy for me to take that attitude when I’m privileged.

But I’m an irenic, conflict-averse kinda guy, when it comes to topics other than comment blocking. And I’ve been online for 25 years: I’ve seen it all.

In making sense of my responses to comments, bear in mind what a Greek once said of me: “picture a Greek greengrocer, who’s culturally British”. A Brit not responding to you is the equivalent of a Greek running at you with a pitchfork.

So.

• I banter in comments. I welcome banter in comments. If we’ve got rapport, you may even get a really badly drawn cartoon.
• If you come at me with arguments, I won’t always like it, and I may well not change my answer; but I will have a lot of respect for you.
• If I mention you without hyperlinking to you, I don’t like you, and/or (usually and) I don’t want you to know what I’m saying about you. That usually extends to Quora staff, but there are two or three regular Quorans I do it to as well.
• If you tick me off, I may just… no, I’m pretty sure… Yeah, my mind’s made up: I will definitely refuse to upvote you.
• But that’s assuming you *really* tick me off.
• Like that guy who thought it useful to share with me that my wife’s name is awful? Seriously, what the hell’s up with that guy?
• If an argument is going south, feel free to have the last word. It’s not like any bystander won’t be able to tell which of us is the nutjob.
• I’ll give you a hint: I’m an irenic, conflict-averse kinda guy.

• The Byzantine navy had already been dissolved in the 1320s; Venice and Genoa ruled the waves.
• The crown jewels were pawned off in 1343, never to be redeemed.
• Byzantium had been wracked by civil war for decades; and the civil wars were being fought on behalf of the factions by Serbs and Turks.
• Gallipoli was occupied by the Ottomans in 1354, establishing an Ottoman presence in Europe; the Byzantines re-took it in 1366 (through the Savoyard crusade, the last time the West did anything to contain the Ottomans for a long time); and the Byzantines surrendered it back in 1376, to repay debts incurred in yet another civil war. Once the Ottomans were in Europe, it was all over.
• The Byzantine emperor John V (1354–1391), humiliatingly, was reduced to begging for help in Western courts.
• The Serbs were defeated in 1371, and the Ottoman Emirate was the only regional power that mattered any more.
• Byzantium was a vassal state of the Ottomans by 1372, and John V was obligated to take part in the emir’s military campaigns.

In my twenties, I was like Jordan. Silence unnerved me. I sought noise. I made noise. I was loud. Sunday nights, when it was deadly quiet as I was working on my PhD, I would put on the community radio Metal show, because I couldn’t deal without noise. (And not because I had any idea what constituted good Metal.) When I moved to the States, I’d spent late nights at Denny’s, so I wouldn’t be alone in the quiet. Music constantly. TV as a comforting buzz in the background.

In my forties, I’ve turned into McKayla. I feel refreshed if I spend a couple of hours staying back at work, with just stillness and quiet and nothing around me. Background music makes me antsy. I rejoiced at the ongoing buzz of Greektown, till 1 AM, when I moved here; seven years on, I stay the hell away from it. I feel at my most euphoric if I’m walking home late at night, in absolute stillness. I don’t particularly seek out music much any more.

Oddly, my neurological situation these days is probably closer to Jordan’s than McKayla’s (something I’ll post about… maybe later). So I’m not sure what the explanation is. But it really is recent; last 3–4 years.

Besides the Positive personification of Greece, Athena, there’s also the negative personification of Greece, Ψωροκώσταινα Psorokostena, “Kostas’ Mangy Wife”. In fact the cartoonist Bost (Chrysanthos Mentis Bostantzoglou) in the ’60s drew Psorokostena as a Mangy Athena:

Although the contemporary blog Psorokostena has adopted a homelier figure:

The story of the historical Kostas’ Mangy Wife is one I didn’t know until today, and it’s… well, it’s sad: Ψωροκώσταινα

Panorea Hatzikostas (feminine form of surname Hatzikostena, though the suffix usually attaches to a husband’s given name) was a refugee in Nafplio from Ayvalık, during the Greek Revolutionary War. In 1826, she gave up her last belongings to fund the Greeks in the Third Siege of Missolonghi. Her gesture inspired the admiration of her countrymen.

Which would be a Good Thing, right?

But then, the meaning… evolved. As the Greek Wikipedia puts it,

“Kostas’ Mangy Wife” refers to the Greek State as a poor country, relying more on volunteer contributions and efforts by its citizens, than on the proper and well-thought out organisation and administration of its funds.

“Kostas’ Mangy Wife will pay for it” meaning that the Greek people will be unjustly forced to pay for expenses incurred by the actions and omissions of the governing class.

Erroneously, the expression “Kostas’ Mangy Wife” is used to describe a poor country, with no sources of revenue, doomed to eternal impoverishment. [citation needed]

Like Alec Fane (in comments to Peter Flom) I differentiate between trolling and non-trolling comments (including insisting on continuing a debate once the OP has agreed to disagree). Because otherwise, disable all comments ever, and be done with it.

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An answer offered in the context of social media* is an answer informed by the reception and feedback of its peers. In that regard, social media is an advance on the traditional, unidirectional communication of opinion: it allows the answer to be enriched, collaboratively, and to be corrected or adjusted as need be.

In fact, in a domain where I don’t have the subject expertise, how the answerer interacts with comments questioning their premises or completeness will inform how trustworthy I consider them to be.

I do think less of Quora members who disable comments. Ernest Adams’ answers for example are (from what I have seen) largely trustworthy; but Ernest Adams has decided that two-way interaction is not for him. Well, if I wanted a one-way flow of information, I’d read a book (or a newspaper column, which is how he’s explicitly described his approach). In this medium, it means he is not opening his answers to inquiry. It is a poor cultural fit to how anyone online now consumes information. It’s his right to do one-way flow; it’s my right to construe that as arrogance, and not to want that on my feed.

And when people go further and offer factually wrong answers while disabling comments (as I’ve discovered in etymology questions), then their disabling comments is allowing them to spread misinformation. Yes, I do post separate answers correcting them. But that really isn’t the same, especially given that users usually see answers in isolation in their feed.

There’s a foundational disconnect here, I suspect, between those who believe an answer is to be judged in and of itself, as a disembodied text, vs those who construct a profile of trustworthiness around answerers.

See also Nick Nicholas’ answer to Why would a person who has blocked you upvote your answers? , which comes from the same worldview as this answer.

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* Quora can deny all it wants that it’s social media. If they’ve got follows and comments, they’re social media. And if they lost follows and comments, well, good luck getting anyone to join…

Hello. Neighbour here.

I know Greeks’ opinion on this question might not be welcome, but it’s reminded me of a very similar question: Why do Greeks (fairly unanimously) hate the 500 years of Ottoman rule but no hate against Venetian rule which was 400–600 years?

You could argue rather convincingly that Venetian rule in the countryside was a lot more unpleasant than Ottoman rule. In Crete, it meant 400 years of corvée (feudal forced labour, whenever the landowner or the state felt like it). It meant the locals really were treated as a colony, and not just a millet. It meant no senior Orthodox clergy. It meant lots of uprisings against Venice, that even the local Venetian colonists took part in. It meant that when the Ottomans came to town to besiege the Venetian strongholds, Cretan villagers actually joined them.

And yet, you’ll only find out about any of that if you’re a professional historian, or you read professional historians. None of it in school, none of it in folksong, none of it in the formation of Greek identity. Why?

Recentism. Anything you hated about the hegemon 500 years ago is irrelevant; what continuity do you have with your ancestors from 500 years ago? Whereas what you hated about the hegemon 100 years ago is still going to inform your perception of who you are, and who you could have been. It’s enough of a time difference to transfer all the old resentments onto the more immediate cause of resentment.

Not saying this is the main reason; others’ responses have been very informative. But I’m sure it’s a factor.

I’m not scrolling, so I’ll reconstruct based on memory and the relative positioning of followers on my profile.

Philip Newton. I already knew him from my previous life as a Lojbanist; and he acted as what I like to think of as my Quora sponsor, being the first to upvote me and comment me.

.i ki’e doi filip .i fau le da’i nu do na zvati kei; mi na banro tu’a la kuoras.