Quora, Inc.

Kevin G Der

Adam Edward D'Angelo

Charles Duplain Cheever

Rebekah Marie Cox

A question-and-answer application with an 'ask-to-answer' feature is described. The ask-to-answer feature enables any user to solicit an answer to a question from another user. Upon soliciting another user for an answer to a particular question, a message with a call to action is directed to the solicited user. The message may include a copy of the text of the question and may provide a mechanism (e.g., a selectable user interface element) enabling the solicited user to pass on answering the question. Subsequent to the solicitation, the question page for the question will include a notification with information about the solicitation, including in some instances information identifying the user who has been asked to answer the question and the number of times the user has been asked to provide an answer to the question.

Methods and systems for soliciting an answer to a question

A question-and-answer application having questions with which topics are associated is described. In some embodiments, user-generated topics are assigned to questions to indicate the subject matter covered by the questions. The application logic includes topic merge logic for quickly and efficiently merging two topics, while enabling the topic merge operation to be easily undone if necessary.

Methods and systems for merging topics assigned to content items in an online application

A method to perform component-based rendering of a webpage includes identifying a component hierarchy from which to render the webpage. A set of components are selected from the component hierarchy as an evaluation component set. The evaluation component set is evaluated by determining that a particular component of the evaluation component set does not include a data request for data item to be used in the rendering of the webpage. Responsive to the determination, least one child component of the particular component is identified within the component hierarchy. The child component is added to the evaluation component set. The newly added component may be evaluated to determine whether the component requires data to be rendered. A batch module may identify data items that are subject to the data request in the evaluation component set, and may proceed to retrieve the data items as a batch from relevant data sources.

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Kevin G Der