As someone who does enjoy having the last word, and also as a writer, I’m compelled to release my indignation into cyberspace over being banned by Quora.  After years of answering thousands of feng shui questions, spending hundreds of hours doing so, I get a very impersonal, robotic notice that I’ve been banned.

With no ability to appeal, I still responded with a request for proof of how I could conceivably be violating their policies.  I genuinely thought that maybe my account had been hacked.  All I have ever done is produce detailed, comprehensive, nuanced and thoughtful answers. Sure, a lot of the questions were similar, like more than one person asking if there is such as thing as “feng shui jewelry.”  I assumed that engagement with the entire world could result in more than one individual asking a similar question. I always took the opportunity to explain something in an original way and challenge my skills to write from a different angle.

In fact, if Quora is such a hotsy-totsy A.I. driven site, why would they let these repetitive questions be noted as “not having an answer yet” and land in my inbox for a response?

In order to attend my bruised ego, I reckoned that this good/bad news places me near the end of a very long line of fellow content creators and experts in their field, unceremoniously banned from Quora, as well as other social media sites. I’m comforted by being in good company. Thank God I did not rely on Quora for income, as what they did to me would have been worthy of a lawsuit.

I went on-line to discover that Quora actually has a very bad reputation as of late. What may have started out as a good idea more than a decade ago has devolved into something that many other experts have walked away from, after experiencing the same bad treatment as myself.

I’m still scratching my head, wondering how the treasure trove of information I delivered free of charge could have been put in virtual prison with no chance of parole, while people who post questions like, “What is the purpose of windows,” followed by “What is the purpose of doors” walk free?

Honestly, part of me is relieved. I have been unburdened by the task of elevating mostly rhetorical or nonsensical questions into a launching pad for genuine responses. I now have part of my morning back. More time for the treadmill without worrying that a bot in a faraway land doesn’t know what to do about a toilet in their so-called Love Corner.

Author: Kartar Diamond

Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®

From the Philosophical and Metaphysical Musings Blog Series