Ask HN: Are most questions on Quora submitted by bots?

6 points by chung-leong 7y ago ↗ HN

Why else would the same question get asked over and over and over again? I don't know how many times I've seen some apparent novice asking what programming language he should start with. A real person would just read one of the many existing answers.

8 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 35.3 ms ] thread

jppope 7y ago ↗

The chances are high... Quora raise $226 million dollars for what would theoretically be a pretty normal CRUD app in most people's minds. So what is that investment being used on? I'm guessing the bots concept has some merit... but its probably larger than that.

seattle_spring 7y ago ↗

> ... for what would theoretically be a pretty normal CRUD app in most people's minds

Is Facebook also a pretty normal CRUD app?

wprapido 7y ago ↗

Quora apparently uses bots for translating questions into languages other than English. Other use cases? It's either bots or a bunch of human morons

mtmail 7y ago ↗

There's a couple of questions on Hackernews that repeat a lot. I'd say human nature, not bots. Some questions have a slight twist or personal background, sometimes a year is added in hope to get recent answers. Same on AskReddit. It's up to the platform (or moderators) to enforce anything.

"Ask HN: How to find mentors?" "Ask HN: How to find a mentor/advisor?" "Ask HN: Where to find a mentor in my city (or any)?" "Ask HN: How to find a mentor?" "Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?" "Ask HN: Where do you find mentors online?" "Ask HN: Where can one find a mentor?" "Ask HN: How do you find a mentor at a new job or a new place?" "Ask HN: Best way to find a mentor" "Ask HN: How did you find your mentor?"...

or which books people can recommend, how to people writes notes, how does your company do knowledge management, how do I learn web development, how does a backend developer switch to frontend...

chung-leong 7y ago ↗

The other day I was about to answer a question about the city of Krakow (where I live). Then I opened the list of hidden answers and saw a guy warning others not to waste their time, since the OP has asked the same question about every other Polish city. Sure enough, a search revealed exactly that. The question actually employed the name "Kraków", which is the Polish spelling.

kohanz 7y ago ↗

I'd say no based on the fact that you see most user-driven forums experience this problem. I can't remember how many times I've seen a pinned post or set of rules to exclaiming "use the search function before posting". Even StackOverflow has many duplicate questions despite possibly having some of the best built-in workflow to prevent that from occurring.

chung-leong 7y ago ↗

It's different at SO. Generally a poster would follow up on their question. At Quora, posters would ask questions and not say a peek after. Lots of copy-and-pasted answers as well.

[dead] globalhacks 7y ago ↗

BINARY OPTION FUNDS RECOVERY/SOLUTION.

Dear readers.

If you are actually reading these, and if your shoe fits in these set of condition that exist at this particular period, you are so lucky enough to be felicitous to see it. Problems evolving around the internet and even the government pays deaf ears to these situation. ●The GLOBALHACKERS has had enough of complains from clients over the years who has one way or the other being a victim of the BINARY OPTION scam. ●Our legal department is dealing with the case of these unbearable swindle scheme taking over the intenet and taking a step forward to render solution to those affected by the fleece. ●This development were made due to fact that scam are all too common in the field of the binary option, Dishonest brokers and reviews, or rigged robots and other auto trading services – the scams can come in many forms. So we feel it’s necessary to create a blacklist and list all known frauds and dishonest techniques in one place.

  Most importantly, We also go through the steps we can take to identify a potential scam and how to deal with the situation after you’re already a victim. If you know or suspect something is a scam, and we can't afford missing it on our blacklist, let us know and we will look into it deeply.

NOTE: These classified information is to go viral the internet. This platform is mostly created for those who are victims of this scam to help recover their funds in short time.

WARNING: Once helped, be careful where you invest your money after it's been recovered by the GLOBALHACKERS. Be wary of adverts on the internet and mostly on social media promising high returns from binary options trading. The binary option is one of the highly recorded scam on the internet. you can stay away from false businesses online surely to be highly oned firm by making enquiries for their firm reference number (FRN) and contact details and barter their calls on the switchboard number and also never make use of the link in a website or an email from the firm propitiating you for an investment.