I know this isn't exclusive to quora, but I really hate the "follow X topics/people/tags/boards that you probably don't even care about but we're going to force you to before we'll let you really use the app so our numbers look good" pattern.
That is a quite essential step for something like this. Take for example Twitter. If you signup for Twitter and don't follow anyone, it is going to be a pretty useless service to you. Same thing with Quora and many others, you need to have a starting point to see the value and start actually using it.
I might be a special case but I signed up for Twitter just so I could keep an eye on who is tweeting about my company and make an occasional reply. I don't follow anybody and wouldn't have finished the signup process if I was forced to follow someone. I find it a pretty great solution for real-time customer service, both as a founder and as a customer, but I don't want to hear everything anyone has to say unless they're a good friend of mine and in that case they are on Facebook. For notable people, if I care at all what they have been up to I will go to their blog, and for a real-time event I will simply search for it on Twitter.
The awesome thing about Twitter is they let me use their service exactly how I want to and don't force me to do anything else, like randomly click 5 topics I couldn't care less about. I wish Quora were similar in that respect.
Is there a Quora use-case I'm missing? What is the scenario where you wouldn't want to follow topics on Quora? Granted, I haven't been on Quora much over the last year, so things could have changed.
I think the issue people are encountering is trying to read an article linked from elsewhere (e.g. Twitter) and having to go through the full onboarding process to read it.
Hi! I'm the person who made the teardown. I tend to hate those too, but for some weird reason found myself enjoying this particular topic-picking experience. It might have been because it felt a lot less arbitrary than many others'.
It actually got me to stop using Quora. I signed up a few years back and enjoyed the weekly digest, which was often quite good at finding questions I might want to read. One day I'm asked to select 5 topics when all I want to do is read this post and there is no "skip" button. Something that was fun has now become work. I would even prefer a "pay $5 and skip this step" button.
I just don't like being forced to do things. Facebook wanted me to add some more info, which I hate, but at least they let me click 'next' a bunch of times and then it was over with.
Quora has done a good job figuring out what I like based on links I click from other sources, why do I have to tell them more? I wouldn't be annoyed by the topic page if it came up one time, I could click "skip" and it goes away forever.
I am not sure I would actually pay $5 to skip that page, I live perfectly fine without Quora, but I'd at least respect the "be annoyed or pay" attitude.
Having said all that, maybe this doesn't annoy many people and I'm simply a grumpy old-ish man.
