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Could Quora credits be a cause for lower question quality?

Over the time of my membership I've seen Quora become more of a casual hangout. In this process that I believe is happening, I believe the quality of the questions are decreasing.

Reflecting over what is going on right now, I've seen some memes posted here, which to me, makes Quora look like Yahoo! Answers.

I believe that Credits has been implemented as a signal-to-noise filter, but could it possibly be so, that Credits have actually caused the growth of such childish and lower-quality topics, because users are aware that they'll get more credits for these types of questions?

I think that these types of questions, provide the user with a better ROI, credits wise. My expectations are that very complex questions can actually make me lose credits, and reduce my ability to ask such questions. So every now and then, because of this, I decide to ask slightly less intellectual questions.
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tynamite
tynamite's avatar You are mistaken for what the actual purpose of Credits, here on Quora is.

Credits is not supposed to encourage people to write lesser or higher quality answers. Credits is instead supposed to encourage people to write more answers - which it does.

The reason why Quora is being swamped with lesser intellectual questions, is because of changes in Quora policies, which have allowed these questions to exist. The main one is allowing users to ask questions that can be easily solved with Google.

At first glance, this is not much of a big change. But if you think about it, it is a great psychology change.

When users of Quora aren't going to do the thinking themselves, and expect others to do the thinking for them, less intellectual questions will be added to the website.

For Quora to be a more intellectual website, where intellectual questions thrive, the Flag feature has to return, and asking easily answered questions on Google here, should not be encouraged and instead be outlawed.

Until this happens, nothing will change.

Not to end this question on a sad note, you can still ask your intellectual questions here, and get them answered. The only difference is that there are less of them, not that people aren't going to be interested in reading them, or not be able to answer them.

Further Reading

If Quora gets more users and more activity, will it get even more uncontrollably addicting?
What is the point of Quora credits?
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