For the main site, there wasn't a specific "inspiration" as such. At the time I didn't like other Pokemon sites out there. They had the content but I found it hard to read and navigate. For Bulbapedia you have to search for everything that you want to find, there is no menu. And it was years before I even found that Serebii has a menu on the right hand side of the pages, I thought it was all ads.
I just wanted information listed quite simply, hence the "database" format and name. I always think about the best way to display information and so on... which is probably why it takes so long to add stuff to the site, I'm too much of a perfectionist ;)
As for the Q&A section, I said on this question:
The software we use (Question2Answer) is loosely based on Stack Overflow. They use their own original system, not Q2A. They kind of revolutionised the Q&A format and were the inspiration for me starting this site.