As in, how can we work around the new regime?

My approach will not work for everyone, but it’s going to be to answer my own questions a lot more, so I can give some visible information on what kind of answer I’m looking for. “This is my first guess” will no longer be in details, but an answer. “These are the assumptions I had in formulating this question” is also going to show up in the body of my self-answer. If that makes it a bad answer, then let Quora machine learning work that out. I have a deficit of sympathy for it, and I do not believe that added background within an answer makes it a bad answer for human readers.

Other than that, question comments are now our new best friends, and I think we’ll be checking them a lot more. (To the extent that they survive merges, which are now more aggressive; but details were already hostage to merges.)

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.

I’m not sure. Really, I’m not sure. I say that, because the following is speculation that your friend might not welcome.

Vavasis Βαβάσης does not have an obvious Greek etymology to me. It may have one, but I can’t discern it.

My first guess was that it is a hellenisation of Babasis Μπαμπάσης, which turns up in Corinthia, and is thus likely Arvanite (i.e. ethnic Albanian); cf. Ndriçim Babasi – Wikipedia, a member of the Albanian parliament.

However, googling establishes a critical mass of Vavasises in Cephalonia, and (from Facebook: Πολιτιστικός Σύλλογος Πάστρας Παλιόκαστρο ) that the surname is associated with the village of Pastra. The surname is given as Cephallonian in the list at Τα επώνυμα των Κεφαλλήνων, originally compiled by Miliarakis in 1890. The surname, FWIW, is not included in the list of local nobility (the Libro d’Oro) of 1799 (http://www.kefaloniamas.gr/κοινω…)

I still can’t think what Greek or Italian name it’s associated with…

… and then, I read the Greek Wikipedia page: Πάστρα Κεφαλονιάς – Βικιπαίδεια

The village was founded by Albanian mercenaries working for Venice in the 15th century. The Pastras family are apparently the majority of the village, but I think it’s still likeliest the surname is Albanian in origin.

Assuming I’m right, I’m going to have to ask Albanians on Quora what it likely means. I don’t know that I’m right, but like I say, I can’t see a Greek or Italian origin for the surname.

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.