Quora and SO are rather different communities. In Quora's best days, there were celebrities or quasi-celebrities making interesting posts, just like on Twitter or Google Plus in top times. Also Quora used to have very active and talented Community Managers / Top Writers. Marc Bodnick used to do tons of curation but left a while ago to create his own social network(s).
In contrast, SO has never been so "celebrity"-driven and the content has a rather different audience. I think it's understandable that the major contributors don't like how their content is being used, similar to the Reddit revolt.
What might "replace" SO is some AI-assisted way to establish a handbook and FAQ for any new technology. That could be a chatbot as well as some effective method for feeding that bot content.
And then SO-the-community, i.e. people who want to talk to each other, will probably branch off into some other forum or network.
In contrast, SO has never been so "celebrity"-driven and the content has a rather different audience. I think it's understandable that the major contributors don't like how their content is being used, similar to the Reddit revolt.
What might "replace" SO is some AI-assisted way to establish a handbook and FAQ for any new technology. That could be a chatbot as well as some effective method for feeding that bot content.
And then SO-the-community, i.e. people who want to talk to each other, will probably branch off into some other forum or network.