Quora Answer: Why do people answer questions on Quora?

For me it is just advertisement for more substantive works I have written. There might be someone out there is something a bit more . . . shall we say . . . substantive.

But then I learned that people do not like to have substantive answers to questions. They vote them down. So then my answers turned contrarian attempting to provoke thought. Especially thought about the inadequacies of Quora itself. Nothing like a bit of reflexivity to stir things up. But of course people do not want to be reflexive about the medium they are using either.

So I more or less have given up now. I answer questions that people ask me if I feel they are significant, relevant or perhaps even meaningful.

What is tangible is when answering a question on a subject that you might not have explored you discover something that you would not have known otherwise in the process of tying to answer the question. Those insights are valuable.