I had to do a lot of fighting to get my answers restored on Quora. Many of the answers they deleted were not even linked to Substack or anything else. In fact when I corresponded with one moderator they couldn’t tell how many answers had been deleted or even the reason for the deletion in the first place.

It’s hard to believe their spam algorithm is this amateur, but this is where things point. I don’t often catch all my typos on the first pass before I post on Quora, so while having a quiet moment, I was reading and editing my answers. Some I was adding a Substack link, and others it was just minor typos. Everything I opened tweaked and saved was flagged as spam because of the number of modified posts that day, so I must have cleaned up and edited 50 popular answers. Boom! Gone!

Even though they restored all 50 as far as I can tell, the fact that this could even happen to anyone who’s contributed for a long time screams of leadership weakness within Quora. Again think about what they value more, let’s stroll down this list of low value priorities. First, me as a writer. That’s down there somewhere. You as the reader, that’s not a consideration. You hundreds of people who commented, you don’t count much as well, so what was it? What did Quora value the most? It’s whatever was most expedient regardless of how draconian in their attempt to reduce spam at any and all cost even if it means killing off innocent participants.

So where does this leave me now? Well, I’m back to answering some questions. Fewer for sure. I don’t want to risk my time with what I suspect is the Dolores Umbridge of managers at the helm of the department. I only have so many hours to devote to writing every day and I can’t afford to waste my time. I’ve definitely lost confidence in Quora. It makes me wonder how questions are actually generated now that I think about it.

I will be writing more on Substack. I put up short chapters of my book every other day. I wrote the book during COVID lockdown in 2020, “How to Not Fuck Up Your Own Company” and there are a few sub-chapters that go up the day after a chapter post. My editor has the last twelve chapters in her hands now.

I also want to get into specifics about how to acquire a company, even if you have no money. I’m going to get into the nitty gritty of it. Even if you’re a CEO, this will give you some insights about acquisition options. It’s worked for me! I get very granular about the steps, how I look for and evaluate companies. I’ll also talk about how to size up the current CEO. It will be fun.