There are resources for inventors. The USPTO has a page. There are startup incubators. There's Kickstarter. And then there's a bunch of slimeball "invention brokers", with success rates somewhere below 0.1%. These clowns are in that category.
Here's my idea: run two sites, the first one's like this (previously unknown to me) quirky, a good way to get candidate ideas some of which would be profitable (but as noted, a horribly ineffective way of actually doing anything with the contributed ideas), and another much more like Bennett's which can effectively filter and exploit the ideas. Then feed the latter from the former, and (with any luck) get profitable products which can then be sold. Or maybe just sell the ideas/patents (along with the list of interested customers) to third party manufacturers (or some combination).
Obviously it would be bad if people at the quirky-like site knew about the other one, so I'd want to keep it quiet (and probably vice versa). Maybe have it only operating in a foreign language in a foreign country (perhaps more than one).
(I'm not suggesting this is how quirky (or any other site) works. Seems likely they started with what seemed like a good idea and for some reason haven't been able to make it actually good (Bennett's analysis seems sound to me, what they're doing seems ineffective). And they don't care yet because they're getting press (apparently, anyway) and perhaps VC. Or maybe it's basically a hobby, or makes enough from selling the rejected ideas back to the proposers, or something else I just haven't thought of.)
