Category: Q & A

The real answer is:

Most men prefer the toilet seat down, and a standard urinal off to the left a bit.
 
Failing that, we can always use the sink in an emergency (sorry short guys), and you'll be none the wiser… Unless it's asparagus night.

Ladies: that might be the best reason to make sure it's never asparagus night.

And I say that as someone who loves asparagus.

Anyway, the point is, urinating in a standard toilet is the last resort of men… We use men's rooms on a nearly-daily basis, and that experience tends to make us terrified of using any standard toilet besides the one at mom's house. Most of the time, we pre-wipe a seat regardless – between all the liquid drops of who knows what, the clinging hairs, and the… smudges… Well, better safe than sorry.

One thing this question really seems to be asking is, "why do men get so upset when women yell at them for leaving the seat up?"

And the answer to that is simple – we spend so much time not dying of the Black Plague in men's rooms, that even trying to imagine that women would assume a toilet clean enough to sit down on without prior examination (the only reasonable explanation for why they might "fall in" to a seat-raised toilet… Well, we just always pictured women as smarter and more cleanliness-focused than that. And really, anything that jarring to one's assumptions can be highly stressful and upsetting.

Do men prefer toilet seats be left up or down?

Looking over the stats of some of the "consistently great contributors", and mapping that against the "most followers" list… I'd say that it happens a lot – if you include "celebrity" as a job title, or expand scope to include "general notoriety" across many other axes.

In part, it's just more likely that someone with a high degree of recognizability will be able to provide amazing personal insights within a set of focused topics… But it's also true that those rare times (for most) that they stray into topics they are not well known for, the novelty of their answer (even if it isn't that great) again makes the follow worth it.

That said, if your goal is to fill your feed streams on Quora with great quality content, then there does not seem to be as clear a correlation between that goal, and following people based on an external criteria like job title (apologies to the many edge cases – but for every great Facebooker or Hollywood screenwriter contrib, there are quite a few more with shinier-sounding jobs who either lurk, flail, or abandoned their accounts).

How often is someone on Quora followed because of their job title, rather than the quality of the content they produce?

A few things come to mind:

• Number of followers
• Follower/following ratio (FFR)
• Their tendency to use @mentions (TUM), making it more likely one of their followers may find/follow you via network effects
• The vigor of their genetic health and suitability for the future production of progeny (VGHSFPP)
• Their consistency of output – if they have great answers, but produce them rarely, you're better off following one of their followers

Besides the quality of their content, what makes a Quora user more desirable to follow?

I like the "perceived distinction" of the various scoring methods:

• Upvote – directly boost the ranking of an answer you like
• Downvote – directly lower the ranking of an answer you dislike
• Thank – send appreciation to the answerer, possibly secretly boost their reputation/authority somehow
• Not Helpful – select a reason for flagging the answer, possibly replacing or adding additional explanation for your dissatisfaction… Possibly secretly lower answerer's reputation/authority somehow, or start to flag them to admins for review after multiple Not helpfuls within a given time period/category/etc… (conjecture! but would be a cool way to handle the 'bad answer vs. bad answerer' issue).
• Comment – Another way to chime in, positively or negatively. Another potential source for scoring reputation – more comments either way could indicate the "excitement level" of an answer. Or its lack of clarity. Or any number of other things. Note that "Not Helpfuls" are included as comments – certainly a negative factor.

(Note: All of the above is simply my perception of how the system may use differentiation to help auto-moderate answers in the most efficient manner possible – there may be truth to any, all, or none of the above)

Currently the issue I have with the system is the apparent inability to both upvote AND mark an answer as "Not Helpful" – in practical terms, this comes up fairly regularly – sometimes even unhelpful answers do more to spark further discussion/resolution of an issue than the one-liner answers that are completely on-topic.

Can "Thanks" negate a "Not Helpful" on Quora?

Perhaps a freemium model would make sense to some: for $5/month or $50/year, make all your answers invisible to the soulless and unforgiving collapse-mods, allowing them to sink or swim based solely on the popular up/down votes.

Alternately, rather than a monthly fee Quora could allow users to bolster their natural vote-strength by "putting their money where their mouth is" – say, adding 5 additional votes for $1 per answer.

Along similar lines, making the "ask to answer" feature available for a one time fee, or exclusively to premium members might bring in a bit of cash without too many complaints, especially if a decent cut is given to those who are being asked to answer.

Finally, paid "featured question" spots in feeds that remain 'sticky until clicked/X overall impressions', rather than simply being washed away in the standard stream, would help get exposure for questions that people feel are urgent/important enough to pay for, so long as it was done tastefully/affordably.

If Quora was to charge a monthly fee, what is the most users would be willing to pay?