Right now what Quora has going for it is the community of experts that it's built. I for one don't see any need to downplay the value of a site that provides knowledge rather then monetary profit. I consider knowledge to be an end in of itself and money to be purely of instrumental value. Besides the knowledge one gains on a site like Quora can be made profitable other ways.

One must consider that some see the non-monetized nature of Quora as a benefit, not a drawback. Because there is no profit incentive we know that beyond the occasional book plug people are there solely with the motivation to share their knowledge. Ergo their profit motivations wont corrupt what they choose to post. While the idea of exchanging knowledge while also earning money is intriguing in order to work the quality of the content must not be diminished by the profit incentive. One need only look at the many terrible "sponsored content" articles out there on the internet to know that profit motivation and intellectual content don't always go hand in hand.

So if SteemIt wants to compete with Quora it will need to recruit the sort of experts Quora is known for while also discouraging low quality, spammy posts masquerading as intellectual content. In addition the site will need new functionality to replicate the question and answer system, more detailed profiles and the ability to make individual posts sortable by date and topic.