[jfengel]

Quora knows that it's about attracting people to write answers, more than people with questions. They've had a number of tactics to get more questions so that people could write answers.

At one point, they paid people to do it -- which went about as well as you would expect. Users complained like crazy and it lasted long, long after it was an obvious failure.

Their idea wasn't completely insane. There are questions that people ask Google that they'd never ask a human. Stupid questions that people will nonetheless answer. And Quora wanted to be the place that Google directed them. Combined with a high reputation from its early days, it was well placed in SEO.

They never figured out how to turn that into money, and they've floundered about. They managed to have a bunch of smart people wanting to show off -- actually giving meaningful answers -- and they squandered it.