Quora has described a new feature, which it calls "Promote," as the ability "to take any item on Quora and spend credits to increase the number of people who see it in their feed."
The top-rated response to this announcement -- by Jonas M Luster -- objects to the change, saying that it creates:
a two-class society of haves (money, existing rolodexes) and have-nots (knowledgeable people whose blogs weren't SEO optimized and who didn't spend money on Twitter spam tools or Facebook campaigns). "In here", in Quora, a cook could say something semi-smart and be heard. A rape survivor could ask something or provide insight and be seen and interacted with by all of Quora. A farmer could talk about cows and milk and a life coach about her work with disabled children.
This is a fair comment. However, the argument itself -- between Quora's upgrade and the sort of objections raised by Luster -- is a bit like arguing if it's possible to build a machine that can carry a couple hundred passengers from New York to Paris in less than 24 hours.
The fact is, it's been done already. So, too, with the ability to give expertise a voice based on its value to the community (as opposed to simply its "influence score," or its ability to pay) -- and it's been proven to work with large, scalable communities.
It's just that "Groogle" has made it difficult for Quora and others to understand scientific progress in the field, so that issues arise which could have been resolved long ago. In fact, based on the above exchange, and the existing science behind "collective intelligence," it's easy to predict the next changes Quora will need to make, and the sort of objections its users will raise.
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