Interesting. Such tricks is exactly why Stack Overflow originally went against Expert Exchange, promising never to hide user-contributed content, and explicitly licensing it as Creative Commons.
Quora is its content. Its content is user contributed. Hiding such content from other users is just plain evil.
The user-contributed content is the central issue. They rely on the kindness of Internet people to create the content, but then they do various tricks to hide that content from Internet visitors. It really is just plain evil.
StackOverflow does modify user-contributed content and have very serious moderators issues.
Which is why I'm sure there's going to be something new coming along one of these days: something where users are in control of what they post (e.g. not a wiki unless the user who did post does accept himself others' edits).
Collaborating to answer questions is fine. But modifying and closing questions artificially (due to very serious moderators issues) isn't acceptable either.
So I'm waiting for the next big thing and I'm sure it shall come.
The difference is that SO mods are actually trying to improve the quality of the site, or at least that's their purpose. Whether people perceive them as doing that in all cases, that's another issue.
Furthermore, SO makes it very clear when someone has updated a question, so it couldn't reasonably be misattributed to you. (It shows the editor's avatar and date.)
And these are all laid out in front in their footer, the FAQ and About page.
You know what you're getting into when you post on a Stack Exchange site. If you don't like it, then you're okay to not use it.
Not like when you post on Quora. Do they tell you that your answers will be blurred and hidden behind a login-wall?
But really, the best programming joke hidden in source code is nothing more than noise. There are other places for that. When you want to cram that into Stack Overflow, then you'll have problems with its moderation.
The mod vs. unmodded issue is a classical problem on the internet, and may never be solved fully. I don't think SO's modding is any worse than Wikipedia's. As such, both are good enough.
>I don't think SO's modding is any worse than Wikipedia's
I agree, it isn't any worse than one of the biggest examples of biased, overzealous, insular, clique moderation online. I think setting our standards a little higher than that is pretty reasonable though.
stackoverflow modifies user-contributed content in much the same way wikipedia does. there is a very clear audit trail for who changed what; as far as i've seen there is never the case where my name is on something but it has been silently changed by someone else.
Quora is its content. Its content is user contributed. Hiding such content from other users is just plain evil.