Users not familiar with Quora (i.e. outside the SV bubble) may not have any idea what Quora is, or what value it provides. Upon stumbling on a link from Google, they click it, are sent to Quora and are immediately asked to create an account. Or maybe Quora will show a portion of the post or a few comments, but you have to establish an account to read more.
Quora is essentially asking to have sex without a first date.
At its core, Quora is (roughly) Stack Overflow: knowledgeable answers to questions, albeit across a broader spectrum of topics. There's good stuff in there. I established an account about a year ago. But when I'm presented with a prompt to log in to simply read something, I don't. And yet I have an account. I simply move on. I can't explain it but it feels offensive, like I'm being gamed.
Stack Overflow and HN provide enormous value to lurkers. I barely comment on things here on HN...but I visit daily. Multiple times a day. Every day.
When I feel the need to comment on HN, I log in. It's actually a pretty simple concept that somehow eludes Quora. One can't help but question why are they so insistent on requiring a user to log in to simply read. Reading is not participating. It is consuming. Imagine requiring a user to login to read a blog post. That's crazy.
There is some motive to requiring a user to login to read. I don't know what it is, but it feels wrong. At the very least, it's not user-friendly. They are discouraging visits and turning people away.
The closest example I can think of to requiring a user to sign in to consume content is Twitter. Somehow it feels different, maybe because Twitter is a microphone for anything you want to say vs. writing up an intelligent answer to a question (or asking a question). Folks can spout out nonsense on Twitter. And part of it is gossip/entertainment. That content won't fly on Quora which desires quality content.
I don't know. That's just one perspective.