Though I love Quora, I see it tending towards the mass appeal category. Funny answers with no relevance to the question, celebrity responses much lower in quality, non-serious take on the questions – all these are drawing more votes than others. It doesn’t bother me on an intellectual level, but it does throw the answers I truly like below the order.

When I opened Quora last night I had a run of questions where the best answers where not even in the top 5-10 responses, pulled down by lower-quality-high-appeal answers.

I decided to conduct an experiment on one such question.

Posing anonymously, I replied on a life question, about something that didn’t happen to me. Rather my friend. However I replied as if it happened to me.
I lied!

But the incident is truly one of the best responses that could exist for that question. My experiment was – will it rise up the ranks, anonymously! No humor, definitely no celebrity. And no smart alec answer. Simple plain admission of an event in one’s life.

I woke up this morning to see the answer gone viral. 1400+ votes as of now, 53 heartwarming comments
The most touching aspect was people spending their credits to promote the answer. Whatever they had – people promoting it to 20 people – 40 people!

My experiment of lies succeeded. People exist!