I started AskMint as a Quora alternative, a question-and-answer website, because of something that happened to me. I loved Quora. I have been there for many, many years. I’ve got the rare privilege of being a Quora top writer six years in a row. Only 72 or 73 people in the world have that title, when Quora was doing top writer. So six consecutive years, I was a Quora top writer. I had 5,000-plus answers. And then, over the last couple of years, I wasn’t posting much, maybe one or two a month, something like that. You pretty much get tired or level out or what have you.
Then came the ban
And then one day, I got an email saying, “You’ve been banned from Quora.” I was like, “What? Banned? What?” “Oh, you’ve been spamming Quora.” “Spamming?” I went through my answers, I looked through it, and I did not see any. I requested a re-evaluation of the ban, and they said, “No, we are not going to open you. We are going to ban you from Quora.” I said, “Okay.” I was very disappointed. 6,000-plus answers, 5,000-plus answers. Hours and hours spent on Quora, and now suddenly I’m a deleted user.
Getting my answers back
So I said, “Okay, this is not on.” I went back to Quora and I said that I want all my answers downloaded. We did a little bit of back and forth, and I got my answers downloaded. Then I said, “I want all my answers and all my data and all my content deleted from Quora.” They again had a little bit of back and forth, but I finally got them to delete all my answers from Quora. And that’s when I decided to say, “Fuck Quora.”
My website, my rules
So now this is my website. I can do whatever I want over here. And if I’m going to be spending time to educate people, sure, it may not have the outreach of Quora, but guess what? I’m happy with that. I’m okay with that. I’m totally cool with that. I’m going to have a website that I feel I can operate any which way I can.
What is coming next
Right now, I’m posting 3,000 of my answers, which are related to banking and payments, and then I’ll be taking another 1,500 answers that I have on the side and slowly be bringing them onto this platform. As I do this, I’m building the point system, the gamification, the up vote, down vote, across the categories, the user registration, all that stuff. So hopefully by December, year-end, all that would be ready, and this website will be launched to commercial public use starting in January.
And it’ll be a very specific people can join in. Not everyone can join in. I’ll make sure that there are some guidelines because I don’t want others to come and just abuse the system. But I want them to have the freedom and an understanding that they can do what should have been allowed on Quora, and Quora bans you for no fucking reason. They don’t even tell you. They’re saying you spam. Spam where? Show me the question. Show me 10 questions where I’ve spammed or answers where I’ve spammed. “No, we don’t have to show you anything.”
Why I started Ask Mint
So this is why I started AskMint. I’ll be updating you as we go along, but this is my first post, rather my first rant, if you will. And I hope you come along and stay with me for the journey. Lots more to come. We’ll keep in touch. Signing off for now.