Cwora - taking the piss out of Quora

http://www.cwora.com/

by instakill • 16 years ago

176 62 16 years ago

cwora.com

user24• 16 years ago

funny, but rather pointless...

andybak2• 16 years ago

Why pointless? It's a parody and it contains a critique of Quora that's fairly valid.

It might not be a particularly deep critique but it doesn't have to be.

jrockway• 16 years ago

What do you do with the piss once you extract it? I have always wondered...

Luc• 16 years ago

Fix dye to wool, or during tanning to loosen fat tissue and hair from animal skin.

And once you take the piss out, they are less full of themselves...

pierrefar• 16 years ago

Sell it as "organic liquid fertiliser". Tesco actually sold a product last summer described with that exact phrase on its packaging.

lsb• 16 years ago

Romans used to use the ammonia in urine to clean sweat and salt off of clothes, and then a second round of sulphur would whiten the urine color off of the clothes. You'd have to have your clothes airing out for a year to get the stench out.

ry0ohki• 16 years ago

I'm guessing the title is the british slang "taking a piss", always wondered the origin of that

Toucan2• 16 years ago

"Taking a piss" is literally urinating. Piss is a synonym for urine. "Taking the piss" in this context means mocking somebody/something.

You can also "take the piss" if you're lying, exaggerating or any number of other social mistakes. If someone said that they had 5 years experience in PHP on their CV and you later found out they didn't, you could say they were taking the piss.

Obviously, it's quite an informal phrase. It's also one that just sounds wrong out of context, the correct context being quite hard to define. Like all slang you have to live amongst people using it before you pick up correct usage.

Toucan2• 16 years ago

If you scroll down to '"Taking the piss"' there's an explanation here: http://www.history.uk.com/history/a-dyeing-art-jess-dyde/

jaxonrice• 16 years ago

Urine was historically used to produce saltpetre, one of the ingredients of gunpowder

gwern• 16 years ago

Or, as Neal Stephenson taught me, phosphorous.

Burn, baby, burn!

cromulent• 16 years ago

You can use it to piss in their pocket.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/piss_in_someones_pocket

kmfrk4• 16 years ago

If only there were a place to get answers to questions like that.

paraschopra3• 16 years ago

This guy should simply stop using Quora if he is pissed off by endless stream of discussions. Why go great lengths to mock it? I don't see any point in this effort.

JonnieCache• 16 years ago

It looks like they had fun making it. I plan to do a version for HN one day but generated using a Markov Model, with karma as the hidden variable. Just one of the many items on The List :)

andybak2• 16 years ago

You don't have to use Quora to be irritated by it... The coverage alone is sufficient for that.

God what a nit-picking, humourless bunch we have here today!

JabavuAdams• 16 years ago

Blue-shiftin' the autistic spectrum. Yeah.

kmfrk4• 16 years ago

You have to make up your mind: Are you criticizing the coverage or the service? The latter has nothing to do with this parody - but it may of course be fueled by the (completely ridiculous, bubble-like) hype.

That's like hating on Obama for the expectations people other than you had for his presidency.

davidw5• 16 years ago

I had a lot of fun doing 73primenumbers.com even though I have a lot of respect for 37 signals, and am extremely grateful for Rails.

gawker• 16 years ago

It seemed like a great joke and definitely much respect to you for taking the time to do it. How long did you it take you to complete it? I had a great laugh and definitely made my day! Our lives need some cheering up from time to time so I totally appreciated it.

lukesdad• 16 years ago

The 73primenumbers thing is quite awesome. Thanks for sharing. One question - why include prime in the domain name? As of this post, 73numbers.com hasn't been registered, and it does seem shorter. Plus, the original "minimalist" 37signals guys decided not to use their domain name to highlight the fact that 37 is a prime number. Is that part of the joke, or what?

paraschopra3• 16 years ago

Guys, please stop downvoting. Okay, I admit it -- I too had fun looked at the mocked Quora and think it was a time well wasted :)

davidw5• 16 years ago

I have to agree. People here used to only downvote a comment like that to 0 or -1: it indicates disagreement, but without that "get him!" mob-piling-on effect.

Zakuzaa• 16 years ago

Gorilla Marketing. (for himself)

instakill• 16 years ago

I wish. This site was made by Tom Scott.

tmcw• 16 years ago

Guys: Guerilla. It's always Guerilla Marketing, and is never Gorilla Marketing, unless Gorillas are your widgets.

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

What if Gorillas are your customers?

p_nathan• 16 years ago

What about when Gorillas are doing the marketing?

Samuel_Michon• 16 years ago

I guess you've never heard of MailChimp?

Primates rock at marketing!

shalmanese• 16 years ago

Gorilla marketing is marketing that attempts to be subtle, witty and genuine but instead, blunders around the place in an obvious fashion, making a lot of noise before it's finally shot, put out of it's misery, stuffed and mounted. Also, it has a small penis.

elvirs• 16 years ago

Seriously, one needs a detailed filter set to navigate through overwhelming stream (or mess) of questions on quora.

Isofarro• 16 years ago

I don't see a browsing path off the homepage on quora that doesn't involve signing up or logging in.

jpcx01• 16 years ago

Brilliant. Funniest thing I've seen all year

kubaf• 16 years ago

what a waste of time (creator time)...

cfontes• 16 years ago

I find it painfully hard to post a question there, it's always pointing to some kind of error, but we get no feedback from the site to what is wrong...

Nice Idea but I think It will take some time to evolve into a nice business, it's like twitter, the business model there will be very confusing.

Cheers from Brazil !

kgosser• 16 years ago

I don't get it.

cagenut• 16 years ago

Hey guys I'm busy flipping my convertible note into what I'm calling a "second seed" round from a bunch of big name Angels for my social-mobile startup and I was talking to an advisor (totally gonna be on the board when we get our Series A) about how its time to add a technical co-founder who can really take the lead on all the implementation stuff we've got in mind and I was wondering if anyone knew the best places to find technical co-founders who are interesting in joining a startup (no salary, 5%)?

Also if you have ideas for the product we should start with, we haven't decided yet, we just really wanna own the social mobile space.

edit: also, can anyone recommended the best bars and restaurants in nyc to network with other social mobile startups?

jimboyoungblood• 16 years ago

I think owning the social mobile space is a great idea!

trotsky2• 16 years ago

I'd suggest instagr.am + foursquare + groupon: Get 10 strangers to take your picture in a 7-11 and check in and you all get free slurpees!

jerf• 16 years ago

No, you gotta be able to monetize that. Get 10 strangers to take a picture of them viewing an ad and check in for a free slurpee. Also, ads on the slurpee, ads on the photo app, and ads in the participating 7-11s. Now we're rolling in dough. Patents for everybody!

phreanix2• 16 years ago

I'm still a bit hazy on how to define 'social mobile', can you explain just a tad more?

Also, so you have ideas, but no concrete product yet, what is the technical co-f going to be working on?

Funny, because I just shot a fellow HN'er an email commenting on his hyperlocal concept and it turned into a hyperlocal, 'social mobile' concept, if it does fit your definition of it.

klochner• 16 years ago

/facepalm

nicholasjbs• 16 years ago

Suggestion for anyone inundated with Quora auto-follow spam: Go here: http://www.quora.com/settings/index

and click "Email Settings" -> "User-related" and then uncheck "Someone starts following me"

achompas2• 16 years ago

I'm really disappointed by the state of Quora in the last week. There has been a flood of useless answers into once-useful questions and terrible questions into once-excellent topics. The state of the "Entrepreneurship" and "Startups" topics must be abysmal right now.

Quora could remedy this by identifying redundant questions for new posters. Let's say someone asks where to find the best technical founders in City A. Instead of accepting that question, Quora should suggest that they look at topics on "how to find technical founders" and "how to develop enough technical skills to produce a MVP." Many message boards use this right now.

I've only posted one (unique) question, so maybe Quora filters posts in this manner and I haven't come across it. Regardless, I'm amazed at how a crowd-sourced site can lose quality as it gains traction.

wushupork• 16 years ago

That's the problem when a very niche and exclusive product gets mass adoption. Quality goes way down. That's how I felt about Yahoo answers. Their challenge is going to be how to drown/filter out the crap and keep it interesting or engaging.

There's a reason exclusivity works. That's one of the reasons I like Dribbble as a designer so much. The quality of the work is so high.

Maybe if Quora only let you invite people when enough people like your questions/answers that might work. I don't know how they could go back to that once they've opened the flood gates.

achompas2• 16 years ago

Right--Quora needs to set up a walled garden. Either a $5 pay-to-post system (worth it for the exposure and recruiting taking place on Quora), or a QA team that frequently audits questions and answers...something to keep their bottled lightning alive. Quora is at an important point in its development here.

phlux• 16 years ago

>* That's the problem when a very niche and exclusive product gets mass adoption *

Personally, I think there is a lot of facebook alumn echo-chamber cocksucking going on in the valley.

ghotli• 16 years ago

I stopped following entrepreneurship and startups this week. I _might_ follow them again someday.

kmfrk4• 16 years ago

From what I understand, /b/ have been trolling Quora recently and quite enjoyed themselves doing so. Don't know how widespread it is.

I think Quora is okay - I don't recall all the answers being great ever - but people need to learn to understand to use the difference between a question comment and an answer soon.

Quora is definitely going to lose a lot of what makes it great if the developers don't come up with some filters.

look_lookatme• 16 years ago

Someone could do this for Hacker News but merely focus on Facebook rage.

kongqiu• 16 years ago

Cwora - that's Welsh for "Yahoo! Answers", no?

ddkrone• 16 years ago

Good thing I got kicked off for running a script to follow every possible person and every possible question on the site.

Cwora - taking the piss out of Quora

Related Stories