There’s a new group on WikiAnswers who makes many small changes in the name of big change: the WikiReviewer Copy Assistants. These little editor elves hop around the site making much-needed improvements to capitalization and spelling.

Individually, these are minute changes, but overall they have a large impact on the quality of questions and answers around the site.

You can read more about the other WikiReviewer roles here.

The Managing Editor for the WikiReviewers is Myrab51. To receive more information, send an e-mail to WikiReviewers @ WikiAnswers.com. Be sure to include your name, username, division you are interested in joining and age. Each member of the WikiReviewers takes a quiz on spelling and grammar before joining, and has to be a minimum of 13 years of age.

Did you know you can subscribe to a real-time feed of newly-composed answers? Every new answer written on WikiAnswers will be sent automatically straight to your RSS reader, for your reading (or editing) pleasure.

Here’s how to subscribe to the feed:

1. Go to the New Answers page and click the RSS icon at the top-right:

2. Then, select which RSS reader you wish to view the feed in:

3. Finally, click “Subscribe now” and you’re all set.

Or, simply click here to go straight to the subscription page without viewing recent answers first.

Now you truly have all the answers.

Here’s a quick tip from the Quick Tip Department. Have you ever wanted to get your questions out there not just to the WikiAnswers community, and not just to your Facebook and Twitter friends, but to all three groups?

Try using the new Facebook and Twitter buttons on question pages. It’s a great way to broaden your audience. Share unanswered questions to get them answered faster by people you know. Share answered questions to show off your talent for answering, or just to share laughs about something funny you read. (You can start with our funniest questions.)

Have fun, and get the word out there!

Shiny new answers. Perfectionistic edits. Categorization after categorization after categorization. Contributions are the pulse of our Q&A community. We record them, search them, filter them, revert them, reward for them and – sometimes – block for them.

There are dozens of ways to contribute on WikiAnswers, and until recently, they were all bundled together into one big contribution total, which looked like this box here.

(This is my stats box, by the way. And I like that number, 22,353. It’s not like Steven Keyman or HisPowr4U, but it’s still something to be proud of.)

What if you could see the breakdown of your contributions, and where you stand within the community in each grouping? Yeah, that’s what we thought, too. So the boys in the back room did some magic, and today we are rolling out a new contribution system that will let you shine in five new ways:

• Answers: first answers
• Edits: edits to questions, answers, alternates, related questions and related links
• Organization: categorization, flags, features, merges, splits, protects and more…
• Questions: questions asked
• Community: messages, discussion posts and bio page edits

Read on to find out where you’ll see the changes.

Bio pages: more transparency

Visit your bio page to see your current stats. Check out the new features:

• If you’re in this month’s top 100 for a specific contribution type, you’ll see a little starburst next to it. Click on the starburst to see the top 100 list.
• Hover over a contribution title (e.g., “Organization”) to see what type of action is included in that group.
• Click “Total” to see all of the user’s contributions.

Category pages: getting to the heart of matters

It takes a lot to keep a category clean, organized and full of good answers. And it takes a lot of curious people to fill it with the questions that keep our minds buzzing.

We now recognize all types of category contributions on a monthly basis, so whether you’re an intrepid new contributor rising through the ranks or a community leader watching from the sidelines hoping to recruit a supervisor, this page has it all.

Missing the forest for the trees? Click the Hall of Fame link to return to the sitewide leaderboards…

Check it out by visiting your favorite category homepage, or see Animal Life for an example.

Leaderboards: being #1 never looked so good

It seemed like a shame to upgrade the contribution system and then send it down the red carpet on the arm of an old leaderboard. A little like being presented at the Inaugural Ball in an Armani suit… and ratty Converse All-Stars from 1977. So we gave the leaderboards a makeover, and there are oh, so many sweet new ways to be #1. See for yourself:

• This month’s top 10s by action type and top 100 overall
• Statistical blasts from the past
• All-time top contributors by action type, by category and overall

Click the arrows to see the top 100.

You’re probably wondering…

• What will happen to my old contributions?
  Old contributions will not be affected. All of the points from old contributions have migrated to the new system. That’s how loyal they are. (Even if they’re wearing ratty old shoes. That’s how loyal we are.)
• What are Historical points?
  Historical points are a record of some very old contributions that didn’t fit into the new system (it was a bit like putting a video cassette into a DVD player). We didn’t want you to lose them, so we created a special category for them. The number won’t change. You can view it as a little contribution nest egg.
• Yesterday I was #1 in answers. Today I’m not even on the list. What happened?
  Monthly leaderboards start fresh on the 1st of every month. This gives all great contributors a chance to shine!
• What about the all-time leaderboards? I’ve been on WikiAnswers a long time.
  They’re still around. We gave them a makeover. Winter colors.
• Where are the new leaderboards? Take me there!
  This is the URL: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Special:Tops. Bookmark it, favorite it, share it with your friends. Hug it like you’ll never let it go.

Testimonials

“This feature ROCKS!” – Ganderton

“I want to cuddle it.” – Eliesheva

“It will make me want to answer more, and that’s a good thing.” – Kmac

“I don’t know how I lived without it before.” – Brave3

“That’s hawt.” – Anonymous

“Split contributions makes me want to be a cheerleader again! Go SCs!” – Crystal

“It looks so pretty and shiny that I could stare at it all day!” – Stupid Little Genius

“The engineers have surpassed themselves… Possibly the best feature I have seen with my time on site.” – Mike 2

“I’m so excited about split contribs that my OCD is going to go into hyperdrive!” – An8thg

What do you think of the new contributions system? Add your own testimonial in the comments section below!

WikiGuides, or WikiAnswers Community Outreach members, perform activities geared toward fostering a positive community experience. They welcome new contributors, invite them to participate in special events, offer guidance, and help where they are needed.

Other opportunities for WikiGuides include sending special occasion greetings, contacting MIA supervisors, and offering congratulations for special achievements.

Recently, we added some awesome new WikiGuide badges. Oh, the levels you can achieve!

WikiGuide (program participant)

Noble WikiGuide (5,000 credits achieved)

Royal WikiGuide (25,000 credits)

Imperial WikiGuide (50,000 credits)

You’re probably familiar by now with the action filter on the recent site activity page that lets you see all new answers by guests so that you can go straight to work on those high-risk answers. (If not, you can read more about it here.)

What about risky answers by users who are registered, but are very new to WikiAnswers?

Well folks, there’s a new tool in town, and it’s a powerful one. Recently, we added a noob filter (officially called “new members” - those who have registered in the last 2 weeks), so now you can see all first answers by new members. Or, since these folks can also edit questions, answers and alternates, you might want to keep an eye on them by filtering for edits by new members.

These filters work on the international sites too. In the URL, just replace “wiki” with the country code. For an example, check out answers by new members on the French site.

Have fun and edit responsibly

Thanks to your great feature requests, we are proud to present a few new ones this week.

Powerful action filters

Recent site activity, recent category activity, user contributions, question history… these lists have been a part of WikiAnswers since the dawn of time (on our timeline, anyway). They contain everything from adding an alternate to changing capitalization; editing an answer to writing on a message board. But they are underused because they can be overwhelming and hard to keep up with.

Enter action filters, and these same pages become extremely powerful, time-saving tools. Now that you can filter lists for your favorite action, you can dive into all kinds of projects. For example:

• Catch potential vandals in the act. Filter for new answers written by guests.
• Get people quick answers. Answer new questions asked by members and their email updates will tell them their answer is waiting.
• Clean up categorization. Filter for categorization by guests.
• Stay on top of your category. Filter for new answers in a category.
• Maybe it still needs improvement? Check out what just got unflagged.
• Focus on a particular contributor. Explore all their questions asked or answers edited.
• Cut out the noise in question history. Just focus on the edits.

Those were some pre-set filters, but if you want to dive in deeper, you can use filters in any combination you like. Here’s how:

1. Go to a page with filters (recent site activity, recent category activity, user contributions, question history).
2. Select a filter option from each drop-down menu. Some pages will have an action menu and a user-type menu; others only have an action menu.
3. Click GO and feel the magic!

More snippets…

You may already be familiar with answer snippets on the search results page, recent site activity pages and category pages. Now we’ve added them to the recently answered questions page, making it that much easier to comb through new answers for bad apples.

Here’s what they look like:

Enhanced spellchekc spell check

Splelling is sometimes a probelm on WikiAnsers, and we like to encourage contributors to take advantage of their various options: IE spell check, Firefox spell check, WYSIWYG spell check…

But in case these aren’t enough, we’ve added one extra push for spell check - a little gradeschool reminder to Spell check your answer! (In case you tried to click on that, well, it’s not a link.)

Next time you edit an answer, just click on the Spell check your answer link near the Save button. It’s fun, it’s fast and it helps!

Send us your feedback!

We hope you enjoy these new goodies - post your thoughts, comments and other feedback below. And once you’ve had a chance to get creative with filters and snippets, send me your most creative ways of using them (pickleshy @ wikianswers.com). The most helpful and creative will be published here for the greater good (or the greater laugh!)

Updates: Corrected the email address - apologies to all those who emailed me at the wrong address!