HN Explorer

Bypass Quora signup wall by appending "?share=1" to URL

64 points by wsr ↗ HN
Is this common knowledge? Pretty useful for the folks that don't know this, like me.

Try it yourself:

http://www.quora.com/Working-at-Google-1/Whats-the-worst-part-about-working-at-Google

vs.

http://www.quora.com/Working-at-Google-1/Whats-the-worst-part-about-working-at-Google?share=1

18 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 47.8 ms ] thread
eknkc
My solution: Bypass Quora signup wall by avoiding Quora entirely.
chj
Exactly.
yuvadam
Yet another expertsexchange.com just with some added hype.
_xhok
Take care to add the hyphen between experts and exchange, or it becomes a different set of words! ;)

(I never realized that till someone pointed it out. I always wondered why they had the ugly hyphen.)

lucasarruda
Funny thing is: the didn't always have that!
yuhong
Experts Exchange I think is paid.
Shank
What I don't understand is why Quora was/is loved by people like the Facebook team after how much they go through to make using their site difficult for end users. The fact that they require you to log in via a social account just to see answers is very similar to the crap experts exchange is by requiring a paid account.

There was a time when I thought it was a better Q&A site, but they continuously make it worse and worse with workarounds like this for the simple act of viewing a page entirely.

pwg
You answered your own question:

> What I don't understand is why Quora was/is loved by people like the Facebook team ... The fact that they require you to log in __via a social account__

Quora "furthers" facebook by requiring a facebook account, so naturally the facebook team will "love" it. It furthers their (facebook's) business interests.

nraynaud
I think they pay some internet celebrities to be there, so somehow it's the only way to get interesting answers to some recent historical things.

My real gripe, is why would google index with a quite high ranking something that's not public?

parktheredcar
They've started to allow signups via email, the link is just really really small.
[dead] rxzv
I'm just amazed they still rank relatively high in google's search results for many of their long tail Q&A type pages. Google is usually pretty quick to penalize sites which use such shady tactics, and I've seen them slap sites for significantly less.

To say it's annoying is an understatement. I wish google would penalize all sites which throw up entry barriers, no matter how quick they are to bypass or mitigate.

creativeone
The quality of Quora's ecosystem should not be judged by it's signup wall.
abhididdigi
The above comment looks flagged, But I seriously don't know why.
strict9
Yes it should. An ecosystem is just that, the whole thing. Some golden nuggets wrapped in excrement is still a ball of excrement.
strict9
Quora is one of the most heinous sites on the internet because I know there is useful information but will hit a trap as soon as I click.

How do they get away with gaming Google search results like this? Why is Google complicit in this shady practice? I don't want walled gardens appearing in search results.