Because Quora doesn't have a damn API.

quora_api_skimmer_lulz.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#!/usr/bin/env python

import urllib2 # Quora no like requests requests. ;_;
from pyquery import PyQuery as pq
from pprint import pprint

class Puora(object):
    def __init__(self, username):
        self.answers_url = 'http://www.quora.com/%s/answers' % username
   
    def get_answers(self):
        request = urllib2.urlopen(self.answers_url).read()

        document = pq(request)
        questions_node = document.find('.main').eq(1).find('.main_col').eq(1).find('.question_link')
        answers_node = document.find('.main').eq(1).find('.main_col').eq(1).find('.feed_item_answer_content').remove('.feed_item_answer_user').remove('.answer_voters')

        questions = [question for question in questions_node.map(lambda i, node: pq(node).text())]
        answers = [answer for answer in answers_node.map(lambda i, node: pq(node).text())]
        return {'questions': questions, 'answers': answers}

p = Puora('Ryan-McGrath')
print p.get_answers()

I don't have the time, energy nor wherewithal to actually build and maintain such a library, but if I did, it'd probably start out like this. Scraping Quora is kind of annoying - cache this data and such, be smart etc etc.

Now, if Quora would just have an API, we wouldn't have to do things like this...

Ur so hxc

What does it do to requests requests?

It returns nothing, for some reason. 200 HTTP response, but no body or anything. Would presume possibly headers related or some such crap.

that's... odd..