It's reasonable to conclude that HN had a significant influence on Quora: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119714

It's reasonable to conclude that HN had a significant influence on Quora: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146 That doesn't mean it's "just" HN though. It's clearly aiming to be very different in the long term. At this point they're not really successful at being any one thing yet.