http://simonwillison.net/2013-03-03T17:54:00+00:00Simon Willison2013-03-03T17:54:00+00:002013-03-03T17:54:00+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2013/Mar/3/what-is-the-history/#atom-tag

<p><em>My answer to <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-question-and-answer-websites/answer/Simon-Willison">What is the history of question and answer websites?</a> on Quora</em></p> <p>I'm afraid this answer will be a little vague, but I worked at Yahoo! back when they launched Answers, and the story I heard was that this category of sites was extremely popular in some Asian countries - particularly countries that didn't yet have a large number of available native language sites on the Web. Q&amp;A sites filled a valuable gap there by allowing people to discover information online in their own language despite there not being many existing sites.</p> <p>I wish I could remember which countries were mentioned as examples - this is from a half remembered conversation I had over 5 years ago.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/quora">quora</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/yahoo-answers">yahoo-answers</a></p>