Meet Joncey. He’s an active contributor in the WikiAnswers community. WikiAnswers reaches across borders and oceans, over mountains and through valleys — Joncey joins us from across the pond in the UK — England, to be exact — a hop, skip and a jump from the North Sea. He’s a normal guy just like you and you and you over there…well except that he adds a “U” to words like color and favorite. He can’t help it though, that’s what they do over there in the Queen’s country.
We wanted to get to know Joncey better…find out what makes him tick. Here’s what he had to say…
How did you hear about WikiAnswers?
Ages ago I stumbled on FaqFarm (as it then was) quite by chance. From what I remember, the colours then were red and white. It wasn’t ‘love at first sight.’ It so happened that the questions on the topics that interested me had been answered by crazy conspiracy theorists. I didn’t return for over a year. So it was all something of a saga for me.
What motivates you to volunteer your time to the WikiAnswers community?
I think that in some ways I’m a natural teacher, and I enjoy explaining things and answering questions… What’s more, I have the time to do so. I try to provide fairly short but adequate answers as often as possible. (It can be tricky as one has to make a guess at how much detail people want).
I was very tickled by some of the comments in Neila222’s interview — I’m also very particular about accuracy, especially factual but also grammatical. So, if Neila is ‘incredibly anal’ (lol) I wonder what people would call me. It points to my being… oops. I mustn’t get too explicit…
What is your area of expertise?
German studies, especially German history since about 1815 – and the language. Obviously, that requires a good knowledge of European history. I also have a reasonable knowledge of the French language though I’ve rather neglected it.
I’ve also traveled quite widely in Europe and have the visited the US five times as an adult, so I have picked up some knowledge of countries and places.
What is the funniest question you’ve seen on WikiAnswers?
The number of questions that give insufficient information for an answer will never cease to amaze me, questions like Which castle burned down? and Does he have a name? Then there are questions How long has English been around?
Funnies include:
Is eating chocolate when depressed a sign that you may be gay? (My answer would be: You may some day be gay in the chocolate way!)
The growing tendency of people who post questions to get into a muddle with the persons of pronouns has produced some very bizarre questions, but without doubt the funniest I’ve seen is: How do you reach my wife’s g-spot? Wow! The mind boggles!
Share a random fact about yourself.
Random facts? Coffee: I adore really strong filter coffee and get through about 1.5lb of high grade Ethiopian coffee a week.
Travel: About 50 visits to Germany (ranging in length from about five days to three months +). And yes, also five visits to the U.S., though mainly to popular tourist destinations like NYC, DC, San Francisco and New Orleans (pre-Katrina). Since the early 1990s, I’ve enjoyed myself exploring parts of the former Eastern Bloc - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania (especially Transylvania) and Bulgaria. I’ve always enjoyed foreign travel.
