So Quora is blasting off right now. Some hyperbolic, breathless suggestions have it becoming bigger than Twitter. I don't know about that, I think that more people are interested in broadcasting than they are in participating in answering questions but I could be wrong. Regardless of where Quora ends up, either as the MySpace or the Facebook of the Q&A world, I think the rapid rise of this site and others, brings up a couple of powerful dynamics that largely go unnoticed...at least not so much noticed given their power (IMHO).
The first difference I see between the dynamic of Twitter and the way something like Quora works is in the Asymmetric Follow.
"Asymmetric Follow is a core pattern for Web 2.0, in which a social network user can have many people following them without a need for reciprocity. Assmmetric Follow is unlike email for example, which tends to be within small groups, with all users knowing each other (newsletters are a clear exception here). If you see a social network where someone has 5000 followers and only follows 150 back – that’s Asymmetric Follow." (James Governor, 2008)
That kind of dynamic is fine if it occurs within a network that accepts modes like broadcasting as well as lurking. I think though that the Q&A dynamic demands reciprocity and active engagement. I have been getting dozens of notices in my Inbox that more and more people are following me on Quora. First I have to wonder why - I assume that like me they are following me because they have seen the questions I follow and we're sort of organically building a community of interests. Secondly though, I began to wonder how many people I wanted to follow back. While I follow over 2,000 people on Twitter and would probably follow more if I just took the time to dig through the wealth of really smart people out there to follow, Quora feels different.
I'm already feeling a limit to the number of people I want to follow...I think because I feel like that could be a lot of questions headed my way and people asking you questions feels like a more significant energy commitment than simply reading tweets and re-tweeting or even replying. So I wonder if Quora does become incredibly large, as an overall community, will it have people who operate at the same scale as Pete Cashmore and Robert Scoble or will it self-limit to smaller communities? ..but wait a sec, I'm just getting warmed up.
I also started wondering about the 'question' dynamic in itself. I mean from a historical/sociological/psychological/anthropological view...what's the Question all about? Turns out that down one avenue, this quickly gets you into discussions of intonation, if questions can exist outside of syntactic structures which leads to Chomsky and discussions of generative grammar and whether or not asking questions is an activity the one cognitive activity that distinguishes human cognition from the smartest of the animal world. Great. One can of intellectual worms opened.
I'm not ready to put these particular worms back in the can yet though because I think this is important. So now I am looking for resources and I am asking questions:
- who is the leading writer/researcher/historian/anthropologist on questions?
- What are the cultural differences in how questions are regarded?
- What is the uptake of something like Quora in non-Western cultures?
- What drives humans to ask questions? Is there a Q&A-focused version of the Dunbar Number?
- Should we as people trying to architect moments of learning, be concerned about having a deeper understanding of this dynamic?
- How has asking questions as an activity changed over time?
- How do things like Mendeley and Zotero play in this space?
- What could we do with the data flowing into Quora et al if there was an open API like Twitter? Could design multiple apps for reaching into that data and displaying questions and answers in a huge variety of ways?
So far I've got:
- Q & A Sites (I know there are more, feel free to add in comments)
- Articles on Quora, Questions, etc (I know there are more of these too :-))
Mark, you may want to frame this as a larger issue. How can you investigate questions without also considering answers?
John Hagel posted this when he was forming Deloitte's Center for the Edge: "Questions are often as valuable as answers. It’s appropriate to step back occasionally and reflect on what we don’t know, rather than simply sharing what we know. In times of rapid change, asking the right questions is often as important as the answers – at least they help us figure out where we might start looking for answers. There is no shortage of questions – the key is to focus on questions that are not just intellectually interesting, but also where significant economic impact is at stake."
Wikipedia reports that some apes can speak, but they don't question:
Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the ability to ask questions is the central cognitive element that distinguishes human and animal cognitive abilities.[4] Enculturated apes Kanzi, Washoe, Sarah and a few others who underwent extensive language training programs (with the use of gestures and other visual forms of communications) successfully learned to answer quite complex questions and requests (including question words "who" what", "where"), although so far they failed to learn how to ask questions themselves. For example, David and Anne Premack wrote: "Though she [Sarah] understood the question, she did not herself ask any questions — unlike the child who asks interminable questions, such as What that? Who making noise? When Daddy come home? Me go Granny's house? Where puppy? Sarah never delayed the departure of her trainer after her lessons by asking where the trainer was going, when she was returning, or anything else"
It strikes me that asking a question is an admission that one doesn't know something and is willing to expose this vulnerability in return for an answer. It's deference to another. The dynamic is mutually rewarding: I learn something from your answer; you feel good about helping out and perhaps superior for having the knowledge at hand.
Questions are "pull." Would that more learning were pull-based, delivering what people want to know as opposed to pushing stuff at them that others think they ought to know. In this light, questions encourage freedom of thought.
Your question will have me thinking, Mark. Thanks for asking.
I'll admit that I'm not up to speed on Quora. I don't understand why it's always asking me to ask questions of new users and I haven't had the patience to grok what's going on.
Posted by: twitter.com/jaycross | January 19, 2011 at 09:22 PM
I would totally like this post if @moehlert had a like button :P
Posted by: Mrch0mp3rs | January 19, 2011 at 02:47 PM
I think this will make more human than human! Don't you all think? It can make us a bit smarter though and knowledgeable but does this make a person so quite nerdy? I don't care what it does to us. I just am glad to have this information because of the fact that it can add up more knowledge in to our brain and makes us always updated. More human than human eh?
xbox wireless controller
Posted by: Angel III Masa | January 18, 2011 at 09:55 PM