Category: Uncategorized

I don’t have the wherewithal to judge where we don’t have good coverage, and I haven’t thought “I cannot get an answer about this topic on Quora”. Then again, I tend not to ask questions on Quora!

But to back up Joseph Heavner’s point and generalise it:

• More humanities and social sciences academics.

I have the utmost of contempt for Quora’s credentialism—what Silicon Valley thinks scholarship is about (to quote myself). But if you go diving into linguistics or sociology, you notice that there’s not a lot of regular users who are academics giving specialist advice. Lots of excellent linguists here, for example, not least of whom IS ME. But people whose day job is as a linguistic academic? Thomas Wier, and he doesn’t write often enough.

I have the distant impression that we’ve got plenty of Hard Science and Computer Science academics here, but I could be wrong.

Mycenaean Greece was a Greek culture, and it was literate at that, though we know none of its literature. The Homeric epics preserve bits and pieces of that culture orally.

But Greek civilisation as we understand it is based on written records, and those written records start with the invention of the alphabet: 8th century BC. Let’s make it 7th century BC for actual literature that wasn’t orally transmitted.

What was India doing in the 7th century BC?

History of India – Wikipedia

From a cursory glance at Wikipedia, India was moving on from Vedic culture to new religions (Śramaṇa) and new systematisations of the old religion (Upanishads), new political structures (Mahajanapada) and new settlements (Iron-Age: Brief Notes on the Second Urbanization in India). The modern tradition of writing in India seems to date from the 4th century BC, but the oral texts of the Vedas, Upanishads, and Epics seem to have been much more extensive than the Greek Epics.

I already substantially answered this on Nick Nicholas’ answer to How long did it take you to become popular on Quora?

As I’ve reported in that and other answers, it was a combination of two things:

• No longer paying attention to new followers.
• Having lots of chat with users outside my areas of core expertise.

The topic about me didn’t make as much of an impression on me as it seems to have to some. The attention the “Discord Teens” seem to be paying me has, admittedly, taken me aback.

There was no direct contact between Ancient Greeks and China. There were a couple of very limited trade missions between the Roman Empire and China, and from what I remember the information exchange was pretty mangled.

Lots of Chinese was translated into European languages once the Jesuits made contact, led by Matteo Ricci in the 17th century.

But you did not say European, you said Indo-European. The obvious place to look is India. There was clearly translation in the other direction of the Buddhist scriptures, to the extent of the Chinese theorising about translation practice: Chinese translation theory. But the earliest indication I’ve found of the reverse direction is in the 7th century AD:

Translation in China

The most important figure of the first peak of translation in China was the famous monk of the Tang dynasty—Xuan Zang (600-664), who was the main character in A Journey to the West. […]

Xuan Zang was also the first Chinese translator who translated out of Chinese. He translated some of Lao Zi’s (the father of Taoism) works into Sanskrit. He also attempted to translate some other classical Chinese literature for the people of India.

The next indication of translation activity into Indo-European I find is 14th century, under the Pax Mongolica, by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani: (see here). “Among Rashideddin’s other works are four volumes of translations from Chinese into Persian, works that he could not have produced by himself, as well as works on agriculture and medicine that incorporate either translations from Chinese or extensive information on Chinese practice derived from Chinese sources.”

Let me sidestep the substance of the question, which has been addressed well under:

• What’s your view regarding Quora’s new anonymity policy changes (March 2017)?
• How well is the “new anonymity” policy on Quora working at filtering out bad content, as of March 20, 2017?

And let me go to the underlying question: how can Quora make decisions that users disagree with?

Anonymity has been complained about for years.

• It has been complained about, with suggestions for improvement, on Quora, a forum which Quora staff as far as I can tell don’t accept any feedback from. (And please. Evidence to the contrary welcome. Being yelled at in comments by current or former leads does not count.)
• It has been complained about, with suggestions for improvement, on the Facebook and IRL top writer groups, some of which putatively Quora staff do accept feedback from.

What we get is… not necessarily addressing the core concerns around anonymity, such as being able to mute anonymous questions. In fact, I’d like to highlight this exchange:

https://insurgency.quora.com/Wel…

Robert Maxwell : My favorite part of all of this is how Quora’s solution to anonymity abuse was to make anonymous questions and answers even more anonymous.

John Gragson : Supposedly it was to be balanced by more aggressive moderation (“pre-review”, they called it).

Viola Yee : All we really wanted was to block a particular anon.

So why would the changes to anonymity not meet our expectations as a community? And why would they have been delayed for five years?

Here’s some possible explanations, and I think they’re all in play:

Why did it take so long?

• There may be a leadership vacuum in Quora; it’s been rumoured here, and it’s hard to discern, with the secrecy Quora maintains about itself. (I’ve just started reading Sun Tzu; that’s one bit they seem to have learned from him.) I suspect that there is no advocate to push user concerns around anonymity to the forefront, and that there may not be a lot of strategic thinking going on anyway. In that case, anonymity instead degenerates into a technical puzzle, a computer engineering rather than a social engineering issue. Which would also account for the chasing-one’s-tail activity around Quora UX.
• And don’t get me started on ongoing inaction about the accessibility of Quora. Marc Bodnick: No, we haven’t (2011) by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency
• Quora has an on-going slowburn PR disaster on its hand with anon abuse, which it has publicly blithely dismissed until it couldn’t any more. The more users, the more abuse; Violet Blue had plenty to report on in 2014, and I’m sure it’s exponentially worse now, because there are exponentially more users now.
• Quora’s primary responsibility is not user well-being, but whatever its leadership deems a strategic or tactical priority. That is a good thing: Quora isn’t a non-profit that exists to make its users happy, it exists to turn a profit by commodifying its users. That is also a bad thing: it does not mean that Quora is immune from making bad decisions, just because its users think it’s making bad decisions.
  As a result, user discomfort around anonymous trolling has not been a priority to do something about until now.
• Remember that allowing users to disable comments on specific questions came in 2016, two years after the articles highlighting misogyny on Quora, and advocating for more effective blocking: Quora’s Misogyny Problem; Quora’s misogyny problem: A cautionary tale | ZDNet. Two years. What, implementing Google Voice has been more pressing?

Why don’t we like it?

• Quora has limited resources—understandably, as it’s still burning through venture capital six years after launch, and has only started to do something visible about monetisation (ads) within the past year. Anything it does will be on the cheap. Bots, and eliminating as much workflow as possible (hence blanket removal of comments). That maximises the scale of the solution, but of course not its quality.
• Which of course is why they should never have undertaken to review all anon questions before publishing them. And have a Quora staff member put his name to that statement. It was never going to happen, it hasn’t happened, and bots don’t count as review. Good to know we have the most well-spelled trolls in the business though. (I’d just found an answer saying that a troll question got through with QCR fixing a spelling mistake. No I can’t find it; I was convinced it was by Heather Jedrus, but that’s not turning up anything.)
• Mountain View, and Silicon Valley in general, seems prone to Not-Invented-Here, which lends them a certain arrogance and lack of consultation in dealing with these kinds of concern. I think it’s been compounded by the insistence that We-are-not-social-media (so we don’t need to learn from social media on how to do moderation), and Shiny Toys (bots will solve everything! And they’re cheap!)
• If anonymity leaks (and there’s been a few answers suggesting it): lack of QA, lack of real user engagement, reactive implementation, possibly distracted by Shiny Objects rather than security holes.
• I am privy to an security hole unrelated to anonymity that a friend discovered, which I am not publicising (and which has been reported). I am aghast at it. Things like it are getting through into production, and they should not be. That also points to failure in management: the buck does have to stop somewhere.
• I think Anonymous’ answer to What’s your view regarding Quora’s new anonymity policy changes (March 2017)? nails it. We have been utterly puzzled about the insistence on true untraceable anonymity, the Wikileaks or Bunker In Syria scenario, whereas overwhelmingly anonymity here is cultural (“don’t feel comfortable putting my real name to this” is a real cultural norm on the internet, and I wouldn’t be sneering about it if I was you). Anon delivers, and I think this theory makes much more sense, as something that would stir Quora leadership into action.

This reminds me of the Apple iPhone case. These new anonymity changes are basically Quora’s way of distancing itself from the responsibility if any law enforcement agency asks about it.

Like Turkish (and just as mumbly as Turkish), with what sound like added uvulars. Which make it sound slightly Arabic.

I have seen another such question about Central Asian Turkic, where an answer commented that it sounded Korean. I can see why: the combination of high back vowels and rapid syllables.

Habib, so many good answers here with allusion to the US Constitution, and I couldn’t hope to exceed them or even reach them.

And then, I remembered a different country’s constitution. Not even its current version.

In the 60s, Greek leftist youth protested the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis and the subsequent upheaval in the country, by chanting “114!”

Article 114, the final article of the 1952 Constitution of Greece. It’s article 120 in the 2008 revision of the current Constitution of Greece.

Σύνταγμα

H τήρηση του Συντάγματος επαφίεται στον πατριωτισμό των Eλλήνων, που δικαιούνται και υποχρεούνται να αντιστέκονται με κάθε μέσο εναντίον οποιουδήποτε επιχειρεί να το καταλύσει με τη βία.

Upholding the Constitution is a responsibility entrusted to the patriotism of the Greek people, who are entitled and obligated to resist by any means necessary whoever attempts to do away with it by force.

Mutatis mutandis, Habib le toubib? You could do worse than this as a closer.

First and so far only eponymous BNBR. Story told in three parts:

• What happened next? by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency
• My first BNBR warning by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency
• Cartoons from my first BNBR by Nick Nicholas on Gallery of Awesomery

(My only anonymous BNBR, I *think*, was for a similar reason.)

… after months of dodging the bullet by using Safari.

… Yeeeeeech.

First suspect thing: how many months does it take to roll out a consistent Quora experience to all platforms? Really? Is that a feature and not a bug?

Second: Why does a “story” I’ve clicked stay shaded? What does that mean? That I’ve read it? What if the “story” was short enough that I didn’t need to click it? Why did I need these distracting shade trackers? Who asked for them?

Third: “Read 1 Answer”? Why “Read”? I wouldn’t know what “1 answer” means under a question?

Fourth: You’re hiding all the other “stories” with this zoomy lightbox thing? Why do you want to disorient me?

Fifth: When I keep scrolling your infernal lightbox down, I end up … scrolling it off the screen? What if I scrolled too fast? What if I wasn’t done with it? What visual metaphor has ever involved scrolling a modal window off screen, to begin with? Anywhere?

What visual metaphor scrolls a modal window halfway off the screen, so I can peer underneath? It’s meant to be a popup, not a convertible sunroof! Why do you make me doubt my sanity?

And if the popup is going to be a convertible sunroof, why does it disappear off screen when I’ve scrolled 3/4 of the way off the screen, rather than all the way off the screen?

And if the modal window is for a “story” shorter than a screenful, why is the modal window flush with the top of the screen, and not in the middle of the screen? Have you ever seen a modal window do that? Does Quora like disconcerting its users? (Don’t answer that.)

Sixth… I reload Quora (in another window) and lightboxes go away again. WTF?

And if that is a feature and not a bug, how can I ensure that I don’t get lightboxes back?

Seventh…

…

… WHAT DO THEY PUT IN THE WATER IN THE UX CANTEEN IN MOUNTAIN VIEW?!

EDIT: Eighth: The lightbox for when I answer a question… The brightness! It burns! (Because there’s all this gleaming white all of a sudden from a blank white modal window against a grey background; much more distracting than the old answer page, which was somehow just as blank.)

Poll: New Blog for Deactivated Quora Users

Purpose: Per discussion under Do we care about Deactivations? by Nick Nicholas on Necrologue, I will be launching a new blog limited to reporting deactivations, to complement Necrologue, with community submissions. The people of Quora can name the blog whatever they want, so long as they choose one of the four obscure Hellenic names I’ve just made up for it.

Deadline: 2017–04–11

Submissions: New Blog for Deactivated Quora Users