Quora

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Quora is a question-and-answer and blogging site created by Adam D'Angelo in June 2009. While many Quora users support science, a good number of cranks also use Quora. Quora does allow anonymously asked questions, some of which concern matters of pseudoscience such as,

“”Is it possible for me to become a successful musician or a recording artist with my horoscope. I was born on September 2 1996 at 8:05 pm in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

It is probably not a major area for cranks because so many users do not support pseudoscience.

Cranks on Quora

• Christopher Langan
• Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
• Daniel Kinch, who believes that a clathrate gun is going to cause global warming to such a degree that humanity goes extinct.
• Lou Liu and his Meether Concept, which appears to be somewhere between energy and matter.
• Rome Viharo
• Gary Null, though he is mostly inactive.
• Many minor ones that have not gotten reference here.

Disturbingly, some of these appear to have a large number of followers, such as Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, though he does write about many things other than his crank ideas about cold fusion, such as religion and the Landmark Forum. He even writes some answers based in facts.

The sections with regard to conspiracy theories are somewhat but not entirely biased towards conspiracy theories. The alternative medicine topics in general tend to be more in line with science, but of course there is great diversity in views among the Quora community.

Questions

Here is a selection of the worst Quora questions. The majority are not like this. Because a majority of Quora's users are from South Asia, these questions mainly cover topics about India, Pakistan and other questions relevant for them.

“”Is God punishing the people of Kerala with nipah virus for eating beef?

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“”Will the movie “Baahubali” enlighten all South Indians of the ancient South India's might and glory (the real India/Indians)?

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“”Isn't Quora spreading Islam?

“”How do we protect Quora from Indians?

“”Which is larger: 0 or 2+7?

“”Writing God in mathematical form. So how many of you will agree with me?

“”What is 1+1

“”Why is it that those on the left don’t understand that if left alone the economy will grow simply because it’s human nature to grow

Many bad Quora questions assume things that are often discriminatory.

Quora and RationalWiki

Quora has a topic on RationalWiki with 22 questions in it. For the most part, the questions have to do with comparing RationalWiki, what people think of RationalWiki, and biases in RationalWiki. Some of the cranks listed above, such as Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, Rome Viharo, and Christopher Langan, regularly post in the topic, though some people there try to defend RationalWiki. RationalWiki is occasionally cited on Quora in response primarily to questions about crank views, itself, and religions. Viharo's "The Attack of David Gerard's 50 Foot Troll Farm" website can be found cited in a few different answers. On the other hand, Quora is sometimes cited on RationalWiki, such as on Wind Turbine Syndrome.

Quora Spaces

There are a number of spaces (AKA shared blogs, AKA echo chambers) on Quora that support lots of nonsense. These include:

• The Christian Corner, which is "Christian posts, shares, and Q&A with discussion and (serious) prayer requests."
• War Elephant, which is the "largest military, politics, and conservative space on Quora."

Quora and news

Some Quora answers are republished on news sites, especially The Huffington Post and Fatherly. Quora also has news articles embedded in its Feed. Romper and POPSUGAR Moms are especially prevalent, though occasionally serious news sites insert articles into a feed. The vast majority of these come from a position based in fact instead of pseudoscience.

Other

• Quora has excluded the Wayback Machine from their website.

See also

• Yahoo! Answers