Because we will leak your data, but we won't bother designating a responsible spokeperson be it security officer, cto, vp of engineering or principal architect. It will be the all nebulous quora team.
Firstly, this post is signed by Adam D'Angelo, the CEO and co-founder. If you had opened the link you wouldn't even have had to scroll down, it's literally on the second line, right after the headline. So clearly Quora doesn't do what you've accused them of doing.
Secondly, what good does crucifying one person do? I'm sure if they had written it such that one person was responsible for everything, a similar comment would have been written - "why make one person the scapegoat? The entire team should take responsibility!!"
I don't know anything about your experience working in software, but when there's a fuck up like this, it doesn't do any good to pin the blame on one person. You figure out where your systems failed, and fix the system after conducting a blame free review. If you start pointing fingers within the team, you'll never get anything fixed.
But still, it is not about finger pointing and blaming one individual. It is about a spokeperson for the public.
The guarantee that things will improve. Someone who will handle announcements and communications with the public and will vouch using their real name and reputation that things will improve. Someone who will explain what went wrong and what actions are taken to ensure this does not happen again. Employee training in place? Tier'ed access of data and information to employees. Stricter policies, eg you can't take a database backup home? etc etc.
Again, no crucifixation required, but pinning an identity can be good, because you know that there is someone and who that someone is that puts all their energy into fixing this mess.
Think of someone like Stamos at facebook. I don't know if his contribution in the end was a net positive or not, but it is good to know that there is someone that is focused on the issue.
If you have a CEO they get paid more (supposedly) because they take on responsibilities. So, the buck should stop with the highest ranked officer who has responsibility (eg signs off payments/work) in that area.
If you don't assign blame, you can never improve your team, as there's no feedback. Assigning blame might mean retraining, it doesn't have to mean sacking (but could).
