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The Descent into Stupidity of Quora’s Evolving Business Model
First, to obviate objections: there’s still a lot of useful content on Quora, the product of sincere people asking questions and knowledgeable people answering them. But that content is getting harder to find, beneath the numbing froth of desultory questions and pointless answers that is the product of Quora’s latest attempt to find a worthy place in the online knowledge world: the Quora Partner Program.
Are you a Quora Partner? I’m not sure you would admit it if you are because it’s not a very lofty aspiration and what you do to earn a trickle (or perhaps a torrent) of cash is to drag down the quality of information on Quora, not by answering questions but by asking them. It’s reasonable to think that a web platform ostensibly devoted to providing helpful information would put a premium on answers. But it turns out that Quora is actually a website devoted to earning ad revenue through clicks, so the experiment now in progress pays people not to answer questions but to ask questions that will draw readers who will click on ads. Can you think of a question that will entice someone to squander a few (more) minutes of their time and put off doing the thing they should be doing? If so, the Quora Partner Program may have a place you.
This arrangement turns on its head the core reason that people engage in question and…
