[intellegacy]

Interestingly enough, Quora's beginning userbase may doom it to forever niche status. The people, while intelligent, seem a little edgy and too sure of their opinions. From what I've observed, this attitude is very off-putting to non-techie, normal people who just want to have a conversation and learn something.

I have a new vision for a website, targeting those dissatisfied with Quora. You can see it here. http://pozium.com/vision.html

[sedachv]

There already was a non-edgy, mainstream Q&A site for normal people before Quora got on the scene: Yahoo Answers. This video is a good summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_RaPOOVX1Y

[theorique]

This may be non-PC, but I think the IQs and maturity of the Quora users and their responses is head and shoulders above those of Yahoo! Answers.

This may be a function of niche vs wide adoption, or real name usage on Quora, but regardless, it's a very apparent effect.

[intellegacy]

Their mean IQs surely are. Know what else sometimes comes with smart people?

Snark, arrogance, responses that come flying at you. Mainstream people don't want to post on Quora. They're intimidated. One of the insecurities of dumb people is to have their dumb-ness pointed out. In their philosophy to ensure quality answers, they've driven away a lot of potential users.

There are some really intelligent, insightful answers on Quora. There's also a lot of attitude.

The sad thing is, Quora is a wonderful niche site. But since they've taken VC money and there are so many expectations in the startup world, they've put themselves in a tough situation in regards to growth. Though they should probably stick to the 'intelligent professional' niche, they probably need to pickup more mainstream users to justify valuations; but it's hard to go mainstream now with the userbase they've built up.

[theorique]

Yeah, I see this a lot in the atheism v. religion debates on Quora (big surprise I'm sure).