[mcv]

It's a bit of both, but you're absolutely right that Quora carries a significant chunk of the blame here. The guy may have been a spammer, but he only became so because of the incentives from Quora's partner program. Quora encourages people to become spammers, and then punishes them when they do. It sounds like a weird kind of test of whether you can resist their incentives.

Ending the partner program when you fail that test might make sense, but quora not paying for the questions they asked for seems unfair, possibly fraudelent. But if Quora wants quality questions to come out of this partner program, they'd better take a good look at their incentives. Maybe reward people only for their 5 best questions every month or so.