This is *somewhat* dangerous, what I’m about to do, but it does strike me as interesting.
I just posted Bodnick’s predictable answer to whether Quora Without Details was a good thing.
Few users like it, and even users I’ve personally blocked as being unreflexive Quora boosters have expressed dismay.
I’m interested in the profile of the people who answered the question saying they think it’s (at least on balance) a good idea. Not to say they are unreflexive Quora boosters; in fact, one of them, Konstantinos Konstantinides, wrote here on how badly it was implemented. But I think the profile tells us something.
Eliminating question details aligns Quora more closely with Quora’s vision of more generic, googleable questions, helping more people (on Google), and away from visibly many users’ vision of helping specific people (on Quora) with their individual questions.
This is not a new divergence; Yishan Wong’s answer to Why are my questions not answered on Quora? pinpointed it back in 2013.
What’s interesting to me is who is aligned with Quora’s vision of what Quora is for.
72 answers at this time; I count 8 pro the change.
6 of them Top Writers. (That’s not a sufficient condition; a lot more answerers are Top Writers contra.) 5 of them 3+ times Top Writers.
Two of them were community admins back in 2012. One of them a former employee.
I think people who have been on Quora since very early on, and who are on good personal terms with Quora staff (so they have been able to discuss Quora’s goals with them, especially face-to-face) are likelier to buy into and invest in Quora’s own mission, than others have been. Even then, it’s not a predictor: I’ve been surprised at the vehemence of pushback by users belonging those classes too (and that’s not counting Bad Hombre Bot).
But I do think buy-in to Quora’s Vision is less likely for more recent arrivals, those that came in not to help build a site with The Best Answer To Canonical Questions, but who liked helping individual people with their questions, or who just liked the forum as a place to write, or the caliber of writing by others.
Just an observation; like I say, the calibration is not terribly strong even among the class of user I’ve occasionally referred to as Old Planters. Discuss.