I remember thinking that Quora was really good, I thought that Hacker News and Quora were two sites with the highest quality user-generated content on the internet.
At the beginning the core demographics was Sillicon Valley startup scene. It felt like a small community of smart and interesting people (my favourites were Yishan Wong and Rory Young). At one point, the site got very popular in India for whatever reason and there was an influx of low quality answers. I left some time after that. There was also a trend of people using the site to promote their products, which was explicitly allowed by Quora AFAIK.
Agreed, early Quora was interesting, it had a buzz and you got answers from people you wouldn't expect.
Now, it's spammy. Some of the questions are ridiculous, with easily Googleable answers, but makes sense if it's spammers using Q&As to raise profiles of people and services.
Quora now also appears desperate. I occasionally answered questions but doing so would trigger something like three emails a day asking me to answer another question. That level of desperation is offputting, so I just unsubscribed and as a result don't answer any more.
I am from India, and I remember the time when Quora got famous. I remember reading some quality content on the platform. Then "the masses" started answering questions just to rack up upvotes (or whatever Quora was calling it). Imagine Instagram, but instead of uploading pictures of yourself you copy-paste someone else's content in an attempt to answer a question you do not know much about.
Agreed, Quora answers these days consist of mostly advertisements and copies of (often stolen) blog posts. I personally try to avoid the platform whenever I can.
At the beginning the core demographics was Sillicon Valley startup scene. It felt like a small community of smart and interesting people (my favourites were Yishan Wong and Rory Young). At one point, the site got very popular in India for whatever reason and there was an influx of low quality answers. I left some time after that. There was also a trend of people using the site to promote their products, which was explicitly allowed by Quora AFAIK.
Right now, it seems that the site is much more popular in countries like India or Nepal than in the US: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=quora