| The robots.txt thing really ices the cake. The whole benefit of online discussion in general is to create as wide and persistent an archive of both questions and answers as possible. To that extent, I applaud StackExchange, even with its aggressive moderation (not too different from better-managed subreddits such as /r/askhistorians or /r/askscience): the audience isn't the person asking the question but all people who might want to know the answer to a given question. And they're better served by having a canonical response. Quora blocking (explicitly) TIA means that that knowledge stays locked in their silo. Pretty much forever. Fuck that. Just yesterday I was musing on energy (something I do a lot) and the fact that even in such advanced energy systems as nuclear fission and fusion powerplants (real or theoretical), all this advanced energy, provided directly in the form of electron volts, is degraded to heat, used to create steam, and then to spin turbines. That's fundamentally a technology that's hundreds of years old (and I think early steam or heat turbines go back further). Windmills date from the 1400s. So I checked AskScience on reddit, and it turns out the question's been asked a few times. And I could read the responses. And, while, yes, I've got an account there, it's not necessary for that purpose: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=electricity+nucl... |