This is an article [1] from 14 years ago where Arrington characterized Quora with “People say they feel smarter after they use Quora” and “It’s kind of like Wikipedia [2]. This is the long tail of information”
> Arrington characterized Quora with “People say they feel smarter after they use Quora”
But… they still do; as the article says, and it’s completely correct, it is essentially selling _feeling smart_. That’s not the same as _being_ smarter, though. I’m not sure there was ever _really_ a golden age; it wasn’t as bad as it is today on launch, certainly, but it was never great.
> “It’s kind of like Wikipedia […]”
Except without Wikipedia’s editing process, which is relatively good at keeping out incorrect things written by internet knowitalls. It _always_, right from the start, had a big problem with the confidently incorrect.
Right at the start when there was artificial signup scarcity it was fantastic. Like hn great except for questions