Month: June 2017

My fourth BNBR, ladies and gentlemen. Just received for:

How to Get Thousands of Leads from Quora in Five Months!!!!

I now believe I am being targeted.

I’m going to absent myself for a while. Clearly Quora needs to be kept safe from the likes of me.

How to Get Thousands of Leads from Quora in Five Months

This… is a Quora I do not inhabit.

And don’t care to.

Enjoy your Leads, Mr Fechter.

Oh. And your Quill.

You can have an answer collapsed. (You are not notified of it unless it was for BNBR.)

You can get a BNBR warning on a comment or answer. If it’s on a comment, the comment gets deleted.

You can be edit-blocked. Initially for a week. For repeat offences, the period can be extended to a month, three months, or six months. Nick Nicholas’ answer to What does it mean to be edit-blocked or banned on Quora?

You can be banned.

Some of the time, your ban can be rescinded.

Some of the time, your ban can be reinstated.

Scrolling past, and seeing everyone say “just take a break, coz we love you man”, and wondering “but is that best for Jeremy”…

… and I see Masiello say: if it’s no fun, then leave.

I was gonna say that. Damn you, Magister!

And then he says he’ll eventually bail too.

Damn you double!

Jeremy, we’re here because it’s fun. Yes it’s addictive too. But if it stops being fun, quitting is always an option. It has to be.

You also took an extended break a few months back because you wanted to focus more on your non-profit idea. If this is removing your focus from what you think is more important, then you’re entitled to quit on that account too.

Of course I’d prefer you stick around, and we keep *cough* collaborating on *cough* research projects. And of course, taking a break is the less drastic option. But it’s not my life, it’s yours. You get to weigh up the pros and cons.

Whatever you decide: we’re proud of you.

I have had conversations in Klingon, including with the guy who was trying to teach his kid to speak in Klingon. (The kid lost interest in it, and I have found a photo of the kid, 15 years later, jumping into a mosh pit. He’s turned out fine. 🙂

The vocabulary admittedly can be a little restricted in some domains. But it can be done, and I have done it.

You aren’t really going to be able to hold a conversation in Klingon, unless you’ve studied The Klingon Dictionary. The book is available in Italian and (I think) German, so in theory it is possible for two people with no common natural language to converse in Klingon. In practice, if any Klingon speaker does not understand English, I would be exceedingly surprised.

Nick Nicholas’ answer to Did ancient Greek scholars ever adapt Roman numerals?

16th century, though they were aware of the Arabic system from the 14th century. It was preceded by Milesian numerals, which were universal by the 1st century AD; before that, they used variants of Attic numerals.

See Nick Nicholas’ answer to Did ancient Greek scholars ever adapt Roman numerals? for more detail of Arabic numeral adoption.

That vague and interstitial domain known as Cultural Studies.

It’s an area I have very little formal training in, and have lots of opinions about. Because I have little formal training, I am forced to think hard about whether my speculations stand up to scrutiny, and I put extra effort into structuring an argument. That, I find very enjoyable.

I enjoy writing about stuff I am actually trained in, as well. But that’s not nearly as challenging.

Well, Kyle, you did A2A me. I think you must have had some idea what you were going to get in response.

Seems like most of these writers don’t actually care much about getting the designation.

Eeyup. And let me not launch into another jeremiad about The Quill. Let me instead link to someone else’s very good jeremiad about The Quill: Lance LaSalle’s answer to Are you disappointed in the March 2017 Top Writer announcements?

I know my worth, and so do the users I interact with. I don’t need a jacket or a buffet to tell me so. Especially a jacket or a buffet from as unresponsive and capricious an organisation as Quora has shown itself to be.

But if they were to engage in a bit of self-evaluation,

Oooh, them’s fighting words, Kyle. 🙂

what do they think they’d have to do differently in order for the selection team to include them?

I’ve heard a rumour that people who don’t get The Quill actually contact Quora staff to ask them that.

It’ll be a frosty day on the Acheron before I do so. (Assuming there even is a selection team, as opposed to an algorithm.) I don’t have to, mercifully; I have positive feedback from flesh and blood users, like Jennifer Edeburn, who has in fact helped me improve my writing through two suggestions: (a) provide more context and explanation; (b) tone down the venom.

Why yes, I have toned down the venom. You should have seen what I was writing a year ago.

What others have speculated about in this thread, which is already making me inch to use my block button?

• Run-ins with Moderation. No. Two BNBRs in two years, both of them nonsensical tone-policing. There are in fact TWs who have been outright banned and unbanned before making The Quill. So it ain’t that.
• I’d be violating BNBR if I named the respondent in this thread I’m now blocking, for his answer about it being all about moderation. Manifestly not the case.
• Niche. Oh, I got niche, and an academic niche at at that. It doesn’t get more niche than Greek linguistics.
• Community mindedness. Third parties have said how I go out of my way to make people feel welcome here. I topic gnome now and then; I even hit the Report button on occasion.
• Write less on the humanities, and more IT. No. If Quora don’t value humanities stuff, that’s their problem. See also Sean Kernan’s answer.
• Stop being critical of Quora, where such criticism is deserved. Is this a deal-breaker for The Quill? Apparently not: John Gragson has found himself with one. Will I stop being critical of Quora? No. John hasn’t, after all.

I don’t see what I need to change to get The Quill. Or at least, what I need to change, that I’d be prepared to change.

I’m not a fan of Feifei Wang’s writing, but there are times I find she truly hits the nail on the head; she did so with her answer here. (And even more so with her retort in comments. Seriously. Read it, and savour it.)

So did Jeremy Markeith Thompson. So did Jordan Yates. So did Gigi J Wolf. So did Michael Masiello.

So did Lance LaSalle:

I thought to myself, I thought: damn, if I have to change my writing style, (include less humor, for example, or make it a bit drier and more direct, and include some footnotes) than I really don’t want it. I got people to meet. Decisions to make. Cakes to bake, etc.

Quill-bearers, I’m happy for you. And I’ve congratulated all my friends who got a quill this year.

But I feel no envy towards you. I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything. If it comes to self-evaluation, I’ll take Jennifer’s advice on how to write better, over a black box’s. And if it comes to having a drink with friends (with better quality nibbles than Quora appears to fork out for), just let me know when any of you come to Melbourne.

Any of you I haven’t blocked, that is… 🙂

I’m sure I’ve seen variants of this question already.

I have not concluded that pictures matter; I use them sparingly, but they don’t seem to act as instant clickbait.

What I have concluded from upvotes—and these are fairly common conclusions—are:

• Anything mentioning anything Indian gets lots
• Anything mentioning American politics gets lots
• Survey questions get lots
• Fluffy banter-y answers get lots
• Scholarly specialist answers don’t get lots…
• … but they get more than you might think.

And:

• I’m not particularly fussed by which kinds of answers get the most upvotes. I’m not above gamification, but the upvote lotto is so random, it does not serve as an effective motivator for me.