It was a casual conversation and the question of why quora when wikipedia exists came up. So let me make an attempt at answering this question. Is quora any different from wikipedia? Why should I, as a consumer of knowledge and information, go to quora instead of wikipedia?
I think the fundamental difference between wikipedia and quora is the distance between the producer and the consumer of information. While wikipedia is a library or a collection of facts scrutinized by a committee, quora is a question and answer site where answers are voted up or down, or in other words, a consensus is achieved through crowd-sourcing. While wikipedia articles can be flagged by users and taken down by members of a committee, the information displayed is often times interpreted as factually correct and sacrosanct by consumers, largely due to its presentation. In contrast, quora rank orders answers to a question based on the number of votes received.
It is this social layer and process through which the most preferred answer to a question emerges that makes quora more suitable to emerging, lesser known or new topics. Quora is better suited for consumption of information as it gets created while the wikipedia repository is more factual in nature.
