Showing posts with label quora. Show all posts
Okay, it's been a forever since I've posted anything pretty much anywhere, the infinite void of the internet holds no interest for me to have my words heard or read any more, but I felt I needed to post this because it's subject is pissing me off...
Or at the very least, I think it's pissing me off, I may yet find it's actually not, and I'm just venting over nothing.
So, here's the schtick, I like hanging about on Quora, for a while I even thought I 'liked' answering questions there, I felt as though I was helping spread a little learning, some positive (I hope...) opinions and making things better.
This feeling has died now and I'm left feeling confused and slightly angry at the Quora site.
As I see it, at the very heart of Quora is the concept of a question & an answer, perhaps not always a good or correct answer, but an answer, inquiry met with feedback, an honest two-way interaction of inquisitive minds and those with the information to feed forward.
But now, I'm jaded, I see a website filled with questions which with even a tiny amount of research are easily answered elsewhere, questions phrased and clearly intoned to be aggravating or 'trolling' and questions which seem to fill no other role than an abuse of the fact that asking questions is rewarded with a share of the site profits (no doubt because of the increase in ad revenue those same questions draw into the site)
Someone asking "is the outcome of 2+2 different on Tuesdays" would likely get a few hundred views, maybe even some earnest answers, and probably a few 'triggered' answers too...
But that question, regardless of how inane it may be, will earn the asker some cash. The asker can then go on to ask the exact same question but rephrased replacing "Tuesdays" with Monday, or June, or 2006... each time they do, being rewarded for their effort and clogging up the site with ever more redundant and objectively poor content.
But, hypothetically; if a theoretical physicist, one whom also has a deep and well-educated grasp of quantum theory and chaos theory (or whatever) were to drop by and give a lengthy and detailed 'actual' answer explaining how even basic mathematics is affected by some hitherto unknown esoteric scientific theorem.
That answer, the sum of their extensive learning, experience, and the time they'd given to put together the answer. Is somehow less valuable?
Fucking what?
And so, I come to realise that once again, idiocy, banality and feigned ignorance are being rewarded while talent, ability and a willingness to help are simply ignored, or even worse - are abused.
Happy Christmas folks.
Or at the very least, I think it's pissing me off, I may yet find it's actually not, and I'm just venting over nothing.
So, here's the schtick, I like hanging about on Quora, for a while I even thought I 'liked' answering questions there, I felt as though I was helping spread a little learning, some positive (I hope...) opinions and making things better.
This feeling has died now and I'm left feeling confused and slightly angry at the Quora site.
As I see it, at the very heart of Quora is the concept of a question & an answer, perhaps not always a good or correct answer, but an answer, inquiry met with feedback, an honest two-way interaction of inquisitive minds and those with the information to feed forward.
But now, I'm jaded, I see a website filled with questions which with even a tiny amount of research are easily answered elsewhere, questions phrased and clearly intoned to be aggravating or 'trolling' and questions which seem to fill no other role than an abuse of the fact that asking questions is rewarded with a share of the site profits (no doubt because of the increase in ad revenue those same questions draw into the site)
Cash for Shit, bring out your shit!
If I might stick with the last point, it seems ass-backwards that a really shit question is rewarded, but a superb, well written and meticulously explained answer yields it's progenitor no benefit.Someone asking "is the outcome of 2+2 different on Tuesdays" would likely get a few hundred views, maybe even some earnest answers, and probably a few 'triggered' answers too...
But that question, regardless of how inane it may be, will earn the asker some cash. The asker can then go on to ask the exact same question but rephrased replacing "Tuesdays" with Monday, or June, or 2006... each time they do, being rewarded for their effort and clogging up the site with ever more redundant and objectively poor content.
But, hypothetically; if a theoretical physicist, one whom also has a deep and well-educated grasp of quantum theory and chaos theory (or whatever) were to drop by and give a lengthy and detailed 'actual' answer explaining how even basic mathematics is affected by some hitherto unknown esoteric scientific theorem.
That answer, the sum of their extensive learning, experience, and the time they'd given to put together the answer. Is somehow less valuable?
Fucking what?
And so, I come to realise that once again, idiocy, banality and feigned ignorance are being rewarded while talent, ability and a willingness to help are simply ignored, or even worse - are abused.
Sigh.
I've no doubt I'll continue to read, and even post on Quora, but I do so feeling somewhat ashamed that I cannot find a better use of my time and a little depressed that I continue to sink in an intellectual mire of self-depreciation.Happy Christmas folks.
Quora Qualms
I recently posted this to Quora.com ...
And it seems I do actually give a fuck, it's all a little self-interested, but nonetheless, I appear to have an opinion and at least moderately altruistic intention.
As I’ve grown older, and become surer in what values I hold true, I became more and more aware of the fact that politically, I lean to the left.
This led me to become more vested in understanding the events and actions unfolding around me, and seeing parts of the opposing political view with which I disagree.
On such a Global stage as we have today, I easily came across the seemingly determined efforts of right-wing efforts in America to stymie what I would see as a more progressive left-leaning world, this included the efforts of religiously focused groups which put deliberate if indirect efforts into pulling the American education system backward, rather than allowing its progression.
Let me backtrack, just a little to explain that, while I am not American, nor do I live in America, nor do I really have any desire to visit the country… but I do recognise that America is ‘loud’ on the global stage, and I also comprehend that the efforts of their political bodies have a direct echoing effect on how the leadership of my own country decides t go about its business. essentially, America is too influential to ignore.
And so, when I learned of a deliberate attempt to enforce an education system which values the content of a particular religion as though equal to the efforts of science over millennia, the story interested me.
I did some research and found the efforts of one man, a man not too dissimilar from myself, but one man that through his efforts has possibly helped hundreds of children receive a modern education rather than an 18th-century indoctrination.
That man was Bobby Henderson, he wrote a letter about a flying spaghetti monster.
I was from that point on, a Pastafarian, I don’t believe there is a flying spaghetti monster, but the ideals which it represents are ideals that I think can lead not just America, but my country, and others into a better world.
Oh dear, I think I actually give at least a few fucks...
So, let me introduce this a little...
I've been passing some of my time exposing what little knowledge I have via the medium of the website Quora. On this site, people ask questions, and others answer.
Simple! - but, in order that the site maintains an air of decorum, they moderate (quite heavily) based on a rule referred to as BNBR.
Be Nice, Be Respectful
Again, that's quite simple, some would say sensible.
However...
I find it utterly futile pandering and simpering to idiocy the site is littered with infantile and often deliberately 'troll' questions, such as "if the Earth is flat why is the sky blue?" There are many 'flat Earth' questions. And many other questions which are puerile in nature.
I find it to be utterly redundant being nice, and certainly being respectful to people that I see as either being willfully ignorant (a trait which I personally find to be quite heinous) or blatantly malicious - attempting to bait others (to cause distress) or waste their time.
In what world should I 'be nice; to someone who seeks to deliberately (or casually) make life harder for others.
Fuck them...
For every question I see with a ridiculous or offensive notion I say; FUCK THEM.
The people that genuinely invest their time, their knowledge and experience, those people deserve more respect than is given... those people deserve to not be plagued by trolls and nonsense.
I have absolutely no problem with a genuine question, one born of genuine enquiry, I'd likely go to excess in order that I might help such a person with such a question.
But I have to toe the line when I see questions like "how can you prove X god isn't real when the moon landings never actually happened!"
To those people... I want to say a big, FUCK YOU
Let me make clear that I will not be nice if I consider that your intention is malicious
Let me make clear I shall not be respectful if you lack the decency to respect others
Some ideas, some questions, deserve being disrespected, deserve that they should be called out as stupid, as idiotic and not given the same weight of importance as others.
</rant /vent>
I've been passing some of my time exposing what little knowledge I have via the medium of the website Quora. On this site, people ask questions, and others answer.
Simple! - but, in order that the site maintains an air of decorum, they moderate (quite heavily) based on a rule referred to as BNBR.
Be Nice, Be Respectful
Again, that's quite simple, some would say sensible.
However...
I find it utterly futile pandering and simpering to idiocy the site is littered with infantile and often deliberately 'troll' questions, such as "if the Earth is flat why is the sky blue?" There are many 'flat Earth' questions. And many other questions which are puerile in nature.
I find it to be utterly redundant being nice, and certainly being respectful to people that I see as either being willfully ignorant (a trait which I personally find to be quite heinous) or blatantly malicious - attempting to bait others (to cause distress) or waste their time.
In what world should I 'be nice; to someone who seeks to deliberately (or casually) make life harder for others.
Fuck them...
For every question I see with a ridiculous or offensive notion I say; FUCK THEM.
The people that genuinely invest their time, their knowledge and experience, those people deserve more respect than is given... those people deserve to not be plagued by trolls and nonsense.
I have absolutely no problem with a genuine question, one born of genuine enquiry, I'd likely go to excess in order that I might help such a person with such a question.
But I have to toe the line when I see questions like "how can you prove X god isn't real when the moon landings never actually happened!"
To those people... I want to say a big, FUCK YOU
Let me make clear that I will not be nice if I consider that your intention is malicious
Let me make clear I shall not be respectful if you lack the decency to respect others
Some ideas, some questions, deserve being disrespected, deserve that they should be called out as stupid, as idiotic and not given the same weight of importance as others.
</rant /vent>
