no.stupid.answers

Wait - are you located in the United States and contributing to WikiAnswers instead of eating a big meal consisting of poultry, watching football and hanging/fighting with family?

Wow. And here I thought I knew all the symptoms of being a Wikiholic… Must have missed one in the giant list that was compiled and posted in a new section of the site called: Wikiholics Anonymous.

It’s ok - this is a safe place. Just sit back, let go of the keyboard, and take this simple test to know if you’re a true Wikiholic.

• Your friends and family try reaching you on your message board, rather than your cell phone.
• You can offer way too much insight into a 16-year-old’s love life.
• You give your kids trust points for good behavior.
• You know Miley Cyrus’s favorite color, the cutest Jonas brother and Barack Obama’s middle name off the top of your head.
• You’ve thought about improving people’s answers while having a conversation.
• Little orange men have started to dance around in your dreams.
• Your spouse claims to be a WikiWidow.

Check out the complete list. Are you showing signs of being a Wikiholic? There’s strength in numbers. Join the support group!

Today I’m happy to present a deeper look into one of the brilliant minds behind the WikiAnswers team. Gil is a WikiAnswers tester, who, when not working on making sure the site is constantly perfect, apparently has other things to think about… who knew?

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Yesterday was a big day for me.

Four of my favorite sports teams were playing simultaneously in three different sports, and luck would have it, they all won!

It’s hard to describe how good it feels for a devoted fan when your favorite team wins a game, I think the closest I can come is it’s like having the best ice-cream headache of your life combined with the rush of eating way too much chocolate (before that nasty stomachache kicks in). So if you’ll take that feeling and multiply it by four you’ll know how I feel today…

…kind of sick.

You see, apart from being a part-time Wikiholic, I am also a sportsoholic.

I follow baseball, football, basketball and soccer; in each I have a different favorite team.

Actually, it’s even more complicated than that.

I root for one baseball team, one football team, two basketball teams (one in located in Israel and one from the NBA), and three different soccer teams (one in Israel, one in England and one in Spain).

Wait, I think I can complicate this even further.

One of the basketball teams and two of the soccer teams play in two different leagues each. That’s like trying to Supervise ten different categories…

Oh, and did I mention that almost half of those games are played between midnight to 6 am, my local time?

So, to recap, every year I follow seven teams in ten different leagues, playing more than 365 games. No wonder days like yesterday happen…

Gil

P.S. And I didn’t even talk about my favorite tennis and golf players!

Do you want to be interviewed for the Contributor corner? Just leave a comment below and we’ll get to work.

Gobble gobble! This week’s WikiAnswers Wednesday is Thanksgiving-themed, and I think you can guess why. Instead of exploring the origins of the holiday, I’d like to go a different angle: describing this wonderful day of wonderful food.

What are some proper adjectives for Thanksgiving?

Now, the answer given on WikiAnswers is logical and… well, less-than-fun. I came up with my own list of ‘proper adjectives’ to describe the American holiday:

• Awesome.
• Tasty.
• Feasty.
• Kinda cruel (to large poultry).
• Kinda cruel (to vegetarians).
• Kinda cruel (to potato-kind though I don’t think potatoes feel anything so it’s ok).
• Pious (if you consider piety to be satiating).
• Family fun (if by fun I mean all of us together in the house again, repeating scenes from childhood).
• Again, awesome.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is ridiculously cool: WikiAnswers has a new welcome tour! If you’re feeling new and are not logged in, you can access it on the left side of any WikiAnswers page, below the log in section. Or you can just click here.

After the tour you can join the site, ask and answer questions, browse categories, tell a friend and maybe even buy a souvenir…

Everyone, attention please! Let’s all give a warm welcome to Cobber43, who not only joined WikiAnswers recently and became a Bronze Contributor, but then proceeded to win in the latest AnswerThon and become a Supervisor! More specifically, he’s a Category Supervisor for Environmental Issues.

Living in Australia, Cobber43 finds WikiAnswers a great way to relax, especially after he’s recently retired from working in a governmental department in Sydney.

How did you originally hear about WikiAnswers?

I was searching for something on Google, and it threw up the link to WikiAnswers… can’t remember what… that fateful day!

Explain your username.

Cobber is an affectionate greeting in Australia. It’s a bit old fashioned now and fallen out of use, probably replaced by the word ‘mate’, as in “G’day, mate”. Maybe 50 years ago they would have said “G’day, Cobber”.

43, well, hmm… that was a good year, wasn’t it?

What motivates you to volunteer your time to the WikiAnswers community?

I’m hoping to keep my brain active. My mother is almost 91 and has a touch of Alzheimer’s, but she did crosswords and jigsaw puzzles right up to a couple of years ago.

So, is WikiAnswers the answer… Now, what was the question again??

What are your areas of expertise?

Jack of all trades, that’s me… and master of none. Replace a VW Kombi fanbelt with pantyhose… no problem. Find the right belt and fit it. That’s a bit harder. I’m interested in the future, so I’ve a rainwater tank, and solar hot water and a recently acquired worm farm with 2000 worms… But no, no expertise…

What is your favorite WikiAnswers feature?

I like splitting questions! Batch split is nice too, but needs much more concentration! I’m waiting for the Ctrl-Z to work, for an instant revert after I just split a great bunch and realise they are ALL in the wrong category (I did it this morning with “How will God deal with global warming?”)

What has been the funniest question you’ve seen or your funniest experience on WikiAnswers?

Nothing much yet, I’ve only been here a few weeks. I may do something stupid soon…

Share a random fact (or two) about yourself.

I once rescued a swarm of bees that had moved into a ventilation grill in my wall. Well, I got a beekeeper to put a funnel over the entrance and a new hive and queen outside, so all the bees had to go into the new hive. And only the old queen died. Sweet! So I was a beekeeper for a couple of years. All my friends got honey for Christmas! Considering how little I knew I was surprised to be called out to move a swarm from a bush outside a factory. Basically you get a big cardboard box under the swarm. Give the branch a sharp downward blow, and all the bees fall into the box and you close the lid. Before the bees swarm they all stock up on honey, so they are all fat and contented, which is why they don’t get too excited. It went very well!

Do you want to be interviewed for the Contributor corner? Just leave a comment below and we’ll get to work.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, as of today the elements that used to make up the Today’s Highlights on the old Answers.com homepage design are back up on the new homepage design. That includes the Spotlight, Quote, Today in History, and Today’s Birthdays.

It also means there are more images on the page, which was a complaint by a few commenters to this blog. Personally, I think the organization of this page is much cleaner, but the Answers.com team is working on ways to ever-improve the homepage.

Check it out.

…but not those charts.

comScore just announced their October Top 50 Web properties. Answers.com sites are up from 45th in September to 34th in October, with about 25 million unique users in the US.

Check out comScore’s top-50 chart and notice that Answers.com properties are actually just thousands away from receiving the 33rd spot. We’ll have to wait and see what the November scores bring.