no.stupid.answers

WikiAnswers was rated as one of “four awesome instructional DIY websites” on Web Upon yesterday Here’s an excerpt of what the post’s author had to say:

“This is a better quality version of the same forums as set by Yahoo! Answers; however, the moderation of this site tends to weed out more of the scam artists and internet thugs. I also find that Wiki Answers has slightly less traffic than Yahoo! Answers, but that traffic is of a more expert nature.”

It’s really cool to hear someone recognizing two of the major points I like to boast about WikiAnswers:

1. WikiAnswers really works hard on its moderation system; the over 400 Supervisors are volunteers from around the world, working around the clock to clean, organize and keep the site’s community running smoothly.

2. Expertise is the game! From doctors to lawyers, mechanics to teachers, WikiAnswers boasts all kinds of professionals who are dedicated to adding accurate answers to all kinds of questions.

Thanks for the recognition, Web Upon!

Ah, the seasons are changing; we are coming up on changing the clocks in a few. The fall and winter seasons make me feel dark and poetic. Let’s explore that together with Jim for this week’s WikiAnswers Wednesday.

Are there any poems written about WikiAnswers in both trochaic and iambic pentameters?

The great thing about WikiAnswers is its natural versatility. Here’s one unnamed example of both poetic meters in action. I’ve isolated each part of each line so you can clearly tell this way which part belongs to which meter.

׀ Yee-haw ׀ Fight-em ׀ Cow-boys ׀ Give-em ׀ Hell-er ׀

׀ Wi-ki ׀ An-swers ׀ the-Site ׀ with-Two ׀ Op-tions ׀

׀ Shake-speare ׀ Wrote-em ׀ in-Iam ׀ bic pen-Tameter ׀ he-Did ׀

One can clearly see that the first line is written entirely in trochaic pentameter. The second line switches from trochaic to iambic and back to trochaic again at the very end. The last alternates as well.

If Shakespeare were alive today he would have most certainly edited one of his most famous lines from Hamlet “to be or not to be? That is the question”. He would change his work today to read,

“To be or not to be? That is the question and the answer can be found at WikiAnswers.”

That’s a line I can stand up and cheer for.

Yours truly,

Jim

Everyone was talking about it yesterday, and everyone had a different take -

NYTimes: Ask.com Revamps Search Engine

eWeek: Ask.com Sails into Semantic Search to Differentiate from Google

Mashable: Ask.com Now Actually Delivers Answers

Search Engine Land: Ask.com Goes Back To 1996 With New Release

AdAge: Ask.com Returns to Answers

Well, however it’s reported, the point is that the Q&A trend is growing strong. Ask.com’s new search bar boasts options like ‘web’, ‘images’, ‘news’ and… ‘lots of answers’. The Q&A search option seems to have the safety net of the Beta tag, but the truth is I think it works out pretty well. It takes your search term and scans the major Q&A sites for relevant pages.

Look up Chicago Cubs, for instance, and you get a wonderful selection from one major Q&A site that I happen to be particularly fond of… Even if it’s not a baseball team I care for.

Hey there! How’s going? Feel like learning about speeds of dugout canoes on Lake Malawi today from Jim? I knew you did!

What’s the average speed of a dugout canoe on Lake Malawi?

As many of you know, I was in Africa for several months this year including several weeks in Malawi, almost all of which were spent on the shores of beautiful Lake Malawi. Almost immediately upon arrival I was intrigued by the very question asked by a clearly intelligent WikiAnswers participant, as noted above. Immediately I began to devise experiments to determine the average speed of the canoes.

I thought the best way to discover the answer to this perplexing riddle was to be in the water itself next to the canoes. However, almost from the beginning things began to go horribly wrong. Unknowingly, I swam into the sacred nesting grounds of a group of hippos. Hippos don’t eat meat, but they will crush you to death if they feel threatened and are responsible for more human deaths in Africa than lions, tigers, polar bears, penguins, bald eagles, and raccoons combined!

Before I knew what was happening, I was fighting off a pack of hippos armed with waterproof guns and huge powerful jaws that kill a man with one bite. Fortunately, I made it past the few hippos, but soon thereafter I encountered my next challenge: overly chlorinated water.

My eyes began to burn like the fires of a fiery-hot hell. Someone thought it would be a good idea to try to chlorinate this part of Lake Malawi and accidentally spilled 2 million metric tons of chlorine into this one part of the lake. Ironically, this accident is what led me to solve the great riddle of the dugout canoe speed. Seeing that I was in excruciating pain, a fisherman paddled over to me and put me in his canoe. He paddled me back to shore and took me to the local clinic for treatment. On the way I asked him what the average speed of a dugout canoe was and he kindly responded: ten kilometers per hour.

I want to wish our Jewish readers out there a happy new year and to all my friends in Malawi and the rest of you, have a great October.

Yours truly,

Jim

Now, here’s one for the record books for most fun username: RockandRollPirate, a.k.a. Liz, has been a contributor since January.

You gotta love a contributor who claims their talents include learning, music, entertainment and… arguing.

She’s hanging around the site, looking to help people. Hmm, does it get anymore WikiAnswers than that?

How did you originally hear about WikiAnswers?

I actually stumbled upon it when I typed in a question off of my study paper. I was doing research for a paper and just copied a question and a very similar one popped up from WikiAnswers. So… it was by the help of good ole Google! :)

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

Mainly to find tidbits of information. I love to learn new things, and I find that WikiAnswers is a great place for that. Also, I find there are a lot of questions and answers that need editing, so I try to help too!

What are your areas of expertise?

Um, mostly Ancient History (i.e. Egypt, Greece). Other than that, I think it would be the Jokes or the Harmless Nonsense. :D

What is your favorite WikiAnswers feature?

Oh, the option to fix spelling and grammar errors. They drive me insane and I am so glad that a site finally has the option to let people fix that! Also, the option to separate two joined questions and to recategorize them.

What is the funniest question/funniest experience on WikiAnswers?

I haven’t been there long… so that would be stumbling across a question that was asking about rainbow-coloured sandals, I believe, that was put under the category of ‘Photography’… Weird.

Share a random fact about yourself.

Oh, that’s a bit hard when I’m such a random person myself. Hah. Um, well to keep it simple, I’m an aspiring photographer. I love taking photos of nature, like flowers, landscapes, sky, etc. I’m aiming to become good enough to serve as a photographer for National Geographic. :)

But for now, I just post my pictures on my website. Hehe. :)

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