I loosely follow various topics on Quora.com. Unlike many social media sites, I find that most of the answers to serious questions are respectful, well though-out, and cite references. Most of the questions I follow and answer are related to my role as an icon designer and web developer. I admit to occasionally getting sucked into a debate on religion or politics, but most of the time I successfully avoid these. A recent question piqued my interest. The question was, “What do I need to learn to build a site like Alibaba”?