See the Quora Knowledge Prize topic and https://www.quora.com/prizes/ . Such a prize already exists, and is funded by external sponsors. These are the current questions: https://www.quora.com/answer/prizes
The topic has a lot of questions about misgivings on the prize; and the prizes to date have been on just IT and US politics.
Strange things are afoot. Until those things are clarified, I’m holding back on saying anything about them.
But I have been thinking a lot about what my responsibility is in criticising Quora, and I have been challenged by a couple of people on what I should be doing.
I welcome these challenges. There’s no learning without challenge, there’s no maturing without challenge. And even if I do not agree with the challenges, it’s incumbent on me to articulate why, and to do so rationally. I owe that to those who challenge me in good faith.
Before the latest weirdness, I received a message 10 days ago from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax. Abd Ul-Rahman will be known to some of you from the Quora Users Free Association, which welcomes banned users on its mailing list. With his permission, I’m posting his challenge here, and my response to it—which gave me the opportunity to introspect, on why I get so worked up about things I see wrong with Quora.
I’d like for this to be a dialogue, with him and others, and I welcome thoughts in comments.
Abd Ul-Rahman:
My suggestion. Lighten up on the loathing. So Quora Inc. is poorly managed. If I were a shareholder, I’d be screaming at them. However, that would stress my heart and I could fall over and die. Further, people rarely respond well to being loathed. Quora Inc. does not actually exist in reality, it’s a human concept and construct, but people who work for Quora may take it personally.
Nick:
So, on the scale of problems in the world, of course Quora Inc doesn’t even rate. And I don’t spend night and day plotting their demise, honest I don’t. Even if it sounds like it. I haven’t even had the heart to do any more memes about Quora, on The Memes of Production; I’d be seeking out things to protest, if I did, and I don’t want to do that.
Moreover, I’ve started to make a conscious effort to be constructive in my criticisms. Especially on Rage Against Quora (I will not piss on the welcome mat in Tatiana’s house), but even in general. Yes, the spikiness is still there in my criticisms back on my own turf; but I try not to seek it out, and honestly I wish I got less A2As on it. I didn’t join Quora to protest an admin team.
So what is it that gets me so annoyed? At a secondary remove, the apparent mismanagement, sure; and that’s been sharpened by conversation with Scott Welch, who after all has excellent insights in how to run an IT-based company. But that’s secondary.
And it’s not because I’ve been impacted all that much by misfires on Quora. I got no moderation notices my first 15 months here. Whatever UI misfeatures impact me, they’re just annoyances.
It’s because I have formed friendships here. And I am indignant on behalf of my friends, when they are mis-targeted, or put out, or frustrated.
And because I made a conscious decision. I am IRL a meek person. A conformist. Part of the problem, if you will. I decided that here, to maintain my self-respect, I would speak out more at what I see as unfair. Maybe because the stakes here are not all that high, ultimately. Maybe because online it’s easier.
Yes, it likely has backfired with the humans behind Quora Inc. I haven’t had outright snark from them yet, but I may yet. And yes, this may cost me the TW, although you know, the TW honestly isn’t that big a deal. Then again, if they curate a community, they have a responsibility to be aware of the problems the community has. I do try to speak more for them than for me.
And just as you put together the Quora Users Free Association (which I was aware of), I put together Necrologue. To serve the community where it was not being served, although in different ways.
But yes, you are entirely right. Be the change, don’t let any struggle consume you, and keep perspective. Thank you for pulling me up on this.
Poem #1
My favourite Esperanto sonnet—which actually dissolves the very form of the sonnet; see:
What is your favorite phrase or line from a poem not in English?
Mi, dezirante ĉerkon
(kapitulaci,
ekshipokrito laca,
ĉi ŝakan ŝercon),
pluportis mian serĉon
ĝis la palaco
de ĉi korpo kuraca,
en kies riĉon
mi kitelumas
pli pace miajn ostojn
ol feton lulas
la utero; kaj ekson
mian ĝi teksas
en naskon.
I, wishing for a coffin
(to quit,
a tired ex-hypocrite,
this joke of chess),
continued my search
until the palace
of this healing body,
in whose riches
I besmock
my bones more peacefully
than the womb lulls
the fetus; and it weaves
my expiration
into birth.
Poem #2
You want obscure? Here’s obscure.
Petrarchan sonnets, written in Cypriot Greek in the mid-16th century. ΟΙ ΡΙΜΕΣ ΤΗΣ ΑΓΑΠΗΣ: ΜΑΣΑΙΩΝΙΚΑ ΕΡΩΤΙΚΑ ΤΡΑΓΟΥΔΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΚΥΠΡΟΥ – THE RIMES OF LOVE: EROTIC MEDIEVAL SONGS OF CYPRUS
I don’t pay much tribute to my father’s, Cypriot side of the family: I wasn’t brought up there, I wasn’t passed on much of it. Apart from a very slight Cypriot accent in my otherwise Cretan- and English-flavoured Greek. So, to my Cypriot peers here: please accept this, by means of apology.
11.
Κοιμώντα μού φανίστην να βιγλίσω
εκείνην απού πήρεν την καρδιάμ μου,
με θάρος να μου στρέψη την υγειάν μου
κ’ εγώ να ’λπίζω μέσα μου να ζήσω·
αμμέ, με δίχως περισσά ν’ αργήσω,
ξυπνώντα ποίκα στρέμμα στην κυράμ μου·
εδίπλασα ξανά την καματιάμ μου
και πάλε πεθυμώ να ξηψυχήσω.
Μμάτια μου, αφόν κοιμώντα μού διδείτε
το ’θελα να θωρούσετε αννοιμένα,
τον κόσμον πιον γι’ αγάπημ μου μεδ δήτε.
Μμάτια μου, αφόν βιγλάτε κοιμισμένα
κείνον που θέλω πάντα να θωρήτε,
μείνετε μέραν νύχταν καμμυμένα.
As I slept, I thought I saw
her who has taken my heart,
with the expectation that she would turn my health around
and the hope inside that I would yet live.
So without much delay,
I woke and turned around to find my lady;
I doubled then again my sorrow
and I wish to breathe my last once more.
My eyes, since you grant me as I sleep
what I wish you could see when you are open,
then for my sake look no more upon the world.
My eyes, since you see while sleeping
what I wish you could keep watching forever,
then stay shut, night and day.
Ah. Let us now praise famous Quorans, and the mentors that begat us.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZvHgp_bKmGo
(And remember to listen through to the last verse, folks.)
The following followers of mine have more than 20k followers of their own.
May I prove worthy of their follows. May I prove worthy of all my followers, whether their follower count is 50k or 0.
Yeah, what the rest of you good people all said, Robert Todd and Amy Dakin and Humphry Smith. It’s correct; it’s dysfluent; and given the pedagogical context, it’s excusable.
That’s why I love podium-arts.com by our own Ioannis Stratakis. He doesn’t dwell on it and drag it out in his recitations, he just gets on with it. It was a real language, after all.
Myself, I think it really is that people expect everyone to be notified about their comments, when they are new to Quora.
Remember that, with no onboarding, it takes a little while for it to become apparent who gets notified of anything, to begin with. It took me a couple of weeks to realise that my comments three levels down would not be read by the original commenter.
I do it a fair bit. Sometimes to start a conversation, although that tends not to work that well. Sometimes because I’m having a discussion in comments, I’m asked a question, and I think it’s useful to get the answer out there. Less often, because I want to get some information out there of my own accord.
Quora policy says there’s nothing wrong with that, and I don’t think there is either. I own the answers, the community owns the questions. I might as well contribute to the community the questions that prompt good answers out of me.
As it turns out, I have read Christ Recrucified and Freedom and Death in Greek, and the Last Temptation and Zorba only in English, in Bien’s translation.
I have not read anyone else’s translation, so I can’t answer your A2A fully. The astonishing folksy stylistics of Kazantzakis are not going to come through in English. That’s actually just as well: an attempt to make them come through would be too distracting, as it is in translating Cavafy.
But from memory, Bien’s translation rang true to the spirit of the novels I had read in Greek. I recommend it.
I tested this on Necrologue. I checked a dozen recent bans, including people I knew had bios.
You are right.
I find this offensive.
Since Rage Against Quora has just been deleted, it will be difficult for this question to be answered.