This post continues from yesterdays where I compared this site a little with Wikipedia. Today I’m comparing it with Quora.

There’s a very reasonable question I get asked a lot, which follows some version of:

WHAT DOES THIS SITE OFFER THAT SITES LIKE WIKIPEDIA AND QUORA DON’T?

Let’s start by saying that I love Wikipedia and Quora, and some other sites that complement them and what we do here.

Wikipedia and Quora have very different structures because they are designed to do somewhat different things. Form follows function, as the architects teach. Other sites, such as Facebook and Reddit also share knowledge, experience and opinions in different ways. Both Quora and Stack Exchange are Q&A sites, but they have different purposes and therefore different structures and rules.

This site is focussed on spreading wisdom. That’s somewhat different to knowledge, understanding or experience, and very different to opinion, although there is clearly connection and overlap, as discussed here.

Fine - so what’s different about the way this site is structured and what advantages does it have?

I’ll answer that in two seperate Blog articles because Wikipedia and Quora are very different. I wrote about Wikipedia yesterday, so today it’s Quora’s turn.

Quora is a wonderful site for sharing knowledge, experiences, and also opinions and some wisdoms. I spend a lot of time on Quora.

Quora isn’t nearly as mature as Wikipedia. Wikipedia now has a clearly defined structure. Quora is still tinkering with its structure. It’s content base is growing steadily. Within its repositories is now a huge and valuable collection of questions, answers, knowledge, experiences, opinions, wisdoms etc. The problem is it’s open ended, disparate, and difficult to navigate.

One obvious problem with the Quora structure is that people keep asking the same questions, sometimes with minor differences in expression. Why? Because it’s very difficult in Quora to find what questions have already been asked and to find the answers that have already been given.

One reason I’ve created this site is because I became tired of answering the same question time and again. So I’ve created the answer on this site, and I simply answer the same repetitive Quora question with a link to the answer in my site now. I note a few others have done the same to their sites too. That way the questioner gets a good polished answer. Quora eventually consolidates the similar questions and answers anyway.

Another problem with the Quora structure is inconsistency. Wikipedia has a clearly defined vocabulary, consistent spelling, and Quality Assurance review. Since Quora’s content entirely consists of contributions from disparate people, you can get a wide variation in the use of English, with words using different definitions and meanings. The answers range from really excellent to awful. Bias, wild opinions, factual errors, and long winded polemic is all too common. Quora has a system of moderation and upvoting / down voting and following that assists in raising the prominence of quality answers, and removing the worst elements of social media from the site, but there’s still quite a lot of bad stuff on there. Quora also tries to promote certain topics and qualities with some success. It’s got a lot going for it, but it’s got a way to go, and tricky problems to manage.

It does cover a wide range of topics, and has some particularly good contributors in many areas, including mathematics. From time to time someone posts a really good question. This site pays attention to the questions raised on Quora in a limited number of relevant areas.

There are topics Quora covers that interest Celestial Koan, but aren’t relevant to this site. One such topic is literature and the art of writing. I contribute answers on Quora which won’t ever be covered on this site.

My experience is that wisdom can be acquired by pursuing extended debates with other wise / wiser persons over a range of topics. By extended debates I mean years. Four hour discussions every fortnight for four years can make some useful progress on difficult topics.

And the first thing one discovers is the importance of agreeing on the meaning of particular words. Words like: spirit, soul, energy, values, choice, mind and the like have to be carefully agreed before meaningful discussions relating to them can occur. Philosophy, for example, has found it necessary to introduce the word warrant, as distinct from justified for the purposes of certain important epistemological debates. Most of the time the exact definition of things like justified and knowledge make little difference, but in certain specific topics of discussion about epistemology they make a lot of difference. In fact it is almost impossible to have the discussion without introducing the distinction into the definitions.

Thus this site distinguishes between a decision and a choice.

A chess playing computer AI has to make a decision concerning which move to play. It will determine the decision it makes by reference to the algorithmic program, and often too by reference to a random or pseudo-random variable, such as random number generator. This is indeed making a decision, but it is not making a choice as the word is defined on this site.

If you come to a T junction and have to decide to turn left or right, you can make a choice (possibly) or you can toss a coin. The coin determines your decision, but it doesn’t mean you made a choice. On this site the word choice refers to Free Will and the ability to make a choice for which you are responsible. As to whether or not Free Will and Choice actually exist, these issues are covered here.

This site can therefore meaningfully discuss matters such as choice and Free Will because we have a database of site terminology here. Words posted on this site always have the same meaning as the site terminology clarifies. Wikipedia has this consistency. Quora cannot. The word choice is used in many different ways by many different people on Quora. The same applies to spirit, soul, mind, etc. etc.

This site is much smaller than Quora and is specifically focussed on wisdom. Rotten Tomatoes is a specialist site for reviewing movies and TV entertainment. On that specialised topic it is very useful. There aren’t too many sites focussed on the topic of wisdom. Maybe this is why I have identified wisdom as being one of the critical factors in short supply in this overpopulated unstable global civilisation.

Quora does not permit extended questions to be asked with background clarification. Thus Quora can post questions like:

What book contains a good description of a dog fight?

Is that a fight between two dogs or between two fighter pilots? There’s no clarification.

Or:

Do great writers taste life differently?

This is a great question for a philosophy or literary debate group. On Quora all one can do is say that it rather depends on what is meant by ‘great writers’ or ‘taste life differently’. Differently to / from whom? Great artists? Great historians. Accountants? Illiterates? Teenagers?

In the absence of clarification it isn’t possible to understand what the questioner is truly seeking, which makes it difficult to provide a good answer. This site doesn’t try to answer unclear questions. If you send in a question that needs clarification we will seek to clarify it before posting an answer. Not that we are a Q&A site. But sometimes a good question provides a topic for a post worth sharing with others.

This site needs a debate forum, which is somewhere well down CK’s To Do list. But in the meantime I can at least write a blog or give extensive answers through The Oracle in a manner which Quora can’t.

While Quora is entirely driven by contributions from the crowd. It is relatively easy to become a member and contribute. (There are a couple of minor obstacles).

This site accepts anonymous commenting very readily, so it is even easier that Quora to post comments to contribute wisdoms.

Contribution via email may be incorporated into our content.

People wishing to contribute more should contact us via email. Don’t hold your breath but we are hoping to grow this site, and that means we need the involvement of more people.

This site will change and grow over time. in the meantime it has a structure that is useful for the dissemination of wisdom. For that limited goal i believe it is better structured than Quora or Wikipedia. We will develop it to become even better over time.