David P.

Quora CAN be an excellent resource for conducting research, exchanging ideas, and finding intelligent/ well thought out/ well written/ informative answers presenting different sides of major issues.

In THEORY, it is a wonderful forum for free speech and debate--giving everyone a voice to express their opinions and positions on a wide variety of issues, regardless of how good, bad, well/poorly thought out, taboo, or outright bizarre that opinion or position may be. That being the case, you will find questions and answers on a diverse array of issues ranging from the important to the unimportant. The ridiculous to the sublime. The intelligent/ well though out/ well written to the downright idiotic. So you have to do some sorting of your own--essentially, you have to take the good with the bad. This sorting thru to chaff to get to the wheat is easy to do and essentially impossible to eliminate in the context of the free and open exchange of ideas.

However, in PRACTICE, Quora falls far short of living up to its potential because of its apparent complete lack of protection against the personal biases of the people who review the questions and answers (and therefore decide if a certain question or answer will be allowed or removed). Because Quora provides almost no substantive information on it's posting rules or review process in general or it's decision-making process in specific situations (choosing instead to cite it's woefully ambiguously and generic "Be Nice, Be Respectful policy"), it is impossible to conclude whether 1) there is a general, institutional bias within Quora on issues in one direction or another, OR 2) proposed questions and answers are subject to the vagaries of happenstance, I. E. - which particular reviewer reviews your question on a particular day (and what his position is on the issue, what mood he's in, etc).

Because of this, as it stands today, Quora is generally like a poster boy for PC-ism at its worst. So, while it does have a lot to offer, Quora falls way short of its potential. Unfortunately, it's highest and best use is checking whether a particular question/ answer/ position/ argument/ etc is politically correct.

So, if you have a thought and need to gauge how politically correct it is, simply post it on Quora. The longer it stays up, the more PC it is. This is a shame.