What is one area where Quora falls short?
Quora has millions of members and weekly visitors, and we thought it would be interesting to poll our community on where Quora can improve. From relevant curation feeds to a lack of diverse content, there are several recommendations from Quora and Terkel users about areas for improvement.
Here are 11 areas where Quora doesn’t live up to the mark:
- Calling Real People Spammers
- Curating a Relevant Feed
- Your Question May Be Left Unanswered
- Quora Lacks Diverse Content
- No Distinct Identity
- The Flaw in Answers by Consensus
- It Doesn’t Do Much For Your Marketing
- Abusive Language Censorship
- A Plethora of Similar Questions
- Not Vetting Answers On Sensitive Topics
- Quora’s Search Functionality
Calling Real People Spammers
Quora is a great social platform due to its networking potential and has great user experience due to its one-on-one question and answer format. Since Yahoo Answers folded, Quora is the main place to go to get your questions answered by a human. However, Quora falls short since it calls ‘Quorans’ that answer questions “spammers”. When I first started on Quora, I left helpful answers, but I got called a spammer. Now, I realize how to make Quora happy: I have to make my answer like a blog post. I add an image and make my answer longer. Since I have a longer answer, my related link no longer looks like spam.
Janice Wald, Mostly Blogging
Curating a Relevant Feed
While Quora offers a goldmine of information to its users, finding relevant queries and answers can be a long task for many. The feed is one such example since it cannot be organized in any way and leaves you with a number of irrelevant posts that hold little value. There’s no option to mute or remove posts that aren’t valuable to the users which can leave a very messy string of posts.
Demi Yilmaz, Colonist.io
Your Question May Be Left Unanswered
Many times you’ll receive an incomplete answer to your question on Quora. You would assume that you would receive a well-thought-out answer to any question you post since it’s such a large social network accessed by millions of people around the world, but that’s not always the case. If you really want a thorough answer to your random question, I would suggest a different question and answer website.
Jean Gregoire, Lovebox
Quora Lacks Diverse Content
Quora lacks a diversity of content in the news feed. Quora’s algorithm can tend to get monotonous. Depending on the pages and posts a user follows, the content shown on news feeds oftentimes recycles, which then leads to bored readers. It is difficult to learn about newer topics with Quora’s current algorithm.
Brogan Renshaw, Modelers Central
No Distinct Identity
Try explaining to someone what Quora is all about, and you will probably end up confusing yourself too. The lack of a distinct identity is easily one of the first things that come to mind when you think about what’s wrong with the platform. This also affects the way this platform delivers information and content. On the one hand, there is well-researched content that provides top-notch information, and on the other, there is personal, promotional, and downright vague content. This identity crisis the platform suffers from confuses the first-time user too.
Krista Haws, Dripped Coffee
The Flaw in Answers by Consensus
Quora will always fall victim to its fundamental flaw: it is answered by consensus. Since responders vote on which answer they believe is strongest, correct answers are not always listed first–just the answer most people believe is correct. In an age where false information is sometimes just as likely to go viral as scientifically-supported, fact-based information, top answers on Quora should never be accepted as unquestionable facts.
Michael Williamson, Hoist
It Doesn’t Do Much For Your Marketing
Basically, Quora doesn’t give you backlinks, consistent traffic, leads, or anything like that. Instead, the platform owns your content without giving you much in exchange. They used to give you more visibility and show quality content to your target audience more, but this is no longer the case. Now Quora tries to keep people reading more and more Q&As without leaving the platform and shows ads. So there’s no sense publishing there when you could be running your blog, producing content for your podcast/YouTube, etc.
Cornelius Fichtner, PM Exam Simulator
Abusive Language Censorship
Quora is an excellent platform for gathering information about a particular topic. However, it lacks the power to restrict or discourage abusive language. Even if Quora has moderators, they are not effectively protecting readers from inappropriate content. Since Quora is rated for at least 13-year old folks, teens may come across languages suited only for adult discussions. Moreover, it contains views that can negatively affect people’s beliefs about politics, religion, gender, and race.
Mike Falahee, Marygrove Awnings Co.
A Plethora of Similar Questions
When you search for a question on Quora, there will be an abundance of results that are mostly similar. The fact that some questions and answers are almost written a decade back and still showing on the feed is just surprising. Even the facts in them have changed over the years but Quora still shows those.
I think this is something that everybody struggles with. If Quora can bring a new mechanism that can improve the content or at least shows the new content first, this will help the users so much.
Meera Watts, Siddhi Yoga International Pte. Ltd.
Not Vetting Answers On Sensitive Topics
The thing to look out for when reading an answer on Quora is the qualifications of the person giving an answer, even if that answer is popular. Someone can give an answer to a question, be very articulate in their answer, and be totally unqualified, and wrong.
This isn’t such a big deal on something trivial like pop culture, but for example someone could give out health advice that could endanger someone’s life. Quora should have protected categories where the people that are allowed to reply are vetted in some way.
Chris Walker, Legiit Online Marketplace Inc.
Quora’s Search Functionality
Quora is definitely a great platform to get your questions answered by industry experts and other similar users. But I think Quora’s search capability is not great, especially if you compare it with Google search. I’m sure most users get Quora answers while searching in Google. But searching directly in Quora does not generate satisfying results and it seems the algorithm used is not very efficient.
This is quite evident if you go to this question thread in Quora: “How does the Quora search box work?” Many users reported their dissatisfaction with the Quora Search Bar. Also, advanced search functionalities are extremely limited in Quora. So I would definitely say that Quora falls short in the search capability.
Sudipta Gupta, WebTopic
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