I have yet to read a post anywhere where someone who is called an insulting name responds with "thank you for showing me the error of my ways - as a result of your reply I have looked deep within my soul and now realise I am a moron. Henceforth all my posts will be sparkling with enlightenment and reason".
With acknowledgement of the fact that you get a good proportion of dickheads on any internet forum, there's nothing more tedious as a reader looking for specific information than having to wade through a massive food-fight to get to anything interesting. Quora will know this, and obviously want to avoid their website becoming 'youtube without the videos'. It's a public forum, and so is always going to be full of misinformation and prejudice. While an 'upvoting' system might not be a perfect way of dealing with this, combined with a level of their own policing (which given the volume of posts will have to be pretty simplistic and arbitrary), it's probably about as good as it's ever going to get.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
