Quora

Quora is another online response to the question of how we go about getting access to reliable information in the digital age. What reliable information might actually be, of course, is a question to which academics would only be able to find no conclusive answer after first being in receipt of several years' worth of research funding.

HOW IT WORKS

As ever in this current stage of the internet's development, Quora allows users to edit and amend articles, but to this now customary model adds a novel twist. Anonymity, the great preserve of the stay-at-home hero, is not permitted.

Quora was founded in June 2009 by former Facebook employees Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever. Since its launch it has attracted hundreds of thousands of users. Can it challenge Twitter?

LET ME INFOTAIN YOU

From the Guardian's Notes and Queries column to the BBC's QI, from Trivial Pursuit to books such as I Used To Know That: Stuff You Forgot From school, our appetite for knowing things is obvious. In this age of wanton information, where bits and pieces of knowledge are stripped of context and thrown around as if they were bombs designed to destroy enemy targets, it cannot be said that we lack the imagination to dream of new ways of disseminating ideas. Will Quora become a feature of internet life, or is it a passing moment? We asked it if God exists. The first line in the responses this query generated was "this question is unanswerable." That's a good enough start and has the rare quality of being honest.

26th April 2011