Quora's "rich get richer" dynamics give more influence to long-time and popular community members; and, combined with its initial demographics (described by Kara Swisher in 2010* as a "Silicon Valley-tech-dudes forum") lead to a site that privileges the opinions of techies, Silicon Valley types, and guys.**

If Quora wants to change, this, adjustments would need to affect ranking, PeopleRank, and Credits. For example, basing the ranking metric for an answer (or comment) on a ratio along the lines of

number of votes / number of active followers the author has

would balance out "reach" advantages, at least to some extent.

Would the top answers be as good with that alternate system? Long-time and popular community members, and Silicon Valley tech dudes, might not think so, at least not at first. On the other hand, newcomers, women, non-techies, and people outside the US quite possibly would -- in fact since their perspectives would now have more weight, they might well see it as even better than today's answers.

So if Quora takes this path (as well as addressing the issues brought up in What are the issues that women face when writing on Quora today (March 2014)?), they could significantly expand their audience and get to penetration (and valuation!) like Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, et. al.

Then again, any changes in rich-get-richer dynamics risk upsetting their longer-term users. So the guys on Quora's management team and their Silicon Valley-based investors may well see their current path as a more likely road to success. We shall see.

* in BoomTown Tries to Get Some Answers From Quora's Adam D'Angelo from 2010