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!

You may have noticed some extra activity in the WikiAnswers search box… or tiny badges on your bio page. Not to mention little snippets of text here and there.

No, aliens have not taken over WikiAnswers (this time). We’ve rolled out a couple of great new features that we hope will make asking, answering and searching a more pleasant and effective experience for you. Our goal with these features is to bring information more directly to you so you don’t have to search for it - and we hope you’ll let us know if we’ve achieved that goal. Now, without further ado, an overview of said features:

FAYT (Find As You Type)

Asking a question? Looking up a person, place or thing? No problem - before you’ve even finished typing, we’ll show you if there’s a matching reference article - or if someone in the community has answered your question.

Just click the “All” radio button and start typing. Reference articles are prefaced by a book icon (), and community Q&A are prefaced by a bubble icon (). Or, choose just “Community Q&A” or “Reference Topics” to limit your search to one type of information. Our suggestions will appear in a list - click an item on the list, or hide the list if you’d rather not see it. (But we think it’s pretty helpful.)

Try looking up “Why is the sky blue?” The find-as-you-type results look like this:

Snippets

Snippets are a short previews of current answers. By looking at snippets, you can get a sense of the answer before you click through to see the question page and question history. Snippets showed previously on the search results page, and now we’ve added them to the recent site activity pages and the category pages. If you’re watching for vandalism, you can now comb the snippets for spam and other bad answers without opening each question.

This is what snippets look like on the recent site activity page:

And on the category page:

Snippets are also a convenient way to determine on the spot if a question is answered or unanswered. No snippet? It’s unanswered.

Stats box redesign

Do you like peeking at other contributors’ contribution stats (or your own)? We’ve tweaked the design to make it even easier to see who they are and what they’ve done.

Visit anyone’s bio page and hover over a mini-badge to see the full badge in all its glory. Also, if you’re a Supervisor, look for a brand-new toolbox at the bottom of the stats box.

Batch revert… turbo style

And, finally, a power tool for Supervisors: turbo Batch Revert, so you can undo weeks of vandalism in just one click. We have lifted the one-week limit on reverts, so go do your thing and catch those vandals!

Survey says?

Check out these tools and tell us what you think. They’ve been a long time coming, and we hope you enjoy them!

You may have noticed some small changes to the site today - and if you did, well, you’ve got sharp eyes. Much of today’s release was focused on bug fixes and performance improvements, and if your answers load faster than usual, feel free to tip your mental hat to our engineering team.

Meanwhile, we’ve added a few handy tools to the menu on the left-hand side of the page. (To access the full version of the menu pictured here, sign up/log in and it will appear immediately.) The new tools are:

• browse categories (takes you to category HQ, where you can search for a topic or browse our category list)
• random page (jumps you to a randomly-picked question on WikiAnswers)
• WikiAnswers email (direct link to WA inbox - supervisors only)

So, what else is new in this release?

Browse unanswered questions

We’ve made it even easier to answer new questions on your favorite topic by adding a FAYT (find-as-you-type) search box to the unanswered question page. Just start typing and related categories will appear.

Who’s on the Community Forum?

The Community Forum also saw a small but significant change today. Scroll down to the bottom of the forum, and you’ll see a new section called “Viewing this forum.” Listed there are all the other members and community assistants who are currently browsing the forum. If you need help with the site, or just advice from another WikiAnswerer, you can turn to these folks for help.

Category page design tweaks

The category page was treated to a modest makeover to improve readability and flexibility. See if you can spot the differences between the old and the new designs!

That’s a wrap! Until next time… onward and upward!

UPDATE: Thanks to Matthew for pointing out that a fix for the missing bio pages didn’t, in fact, make this release. We apologize, and it’s on the way.

Are you sitting down? We have some news.

It’s time to bid farewell to our beloved Orange Guy. He’s been with us through thick and thin… but he’s also been busy helping many others on the web, too, and it’s time for a champion of our very own. Never fear - he is leaving a cousin to care for the WikiAnswers.com community! Introducing… the stick dude.

Like WikiAnswers contributors, the stick dude - and his stick crew - are a curious, friendly group that love to hang around the community, sharing what they know. These are your go-to guys, a friendly right-hand man, helping you around the site. The stick crew wants to make sure everyone has the best experience on WA, whether it’s poking around the Help Center or applauding the best questions and answers.

One thing remains to be decided. What should we call our new caretaker? “Stick” is lacking in… shall we say… pizzazz. We could name him Twiggy, after his toothpick legs. Supertwig came to mind, Or simply Fred or Skip. How about Max (and his lady friend, Maxine)? We’ve also had some more sophisticated ideas: JACK (jocular assistant of community knowledge) and CAL (community art liaison).

We need your help, and more importantly, stick dude needs your help. What are your favorite names for our new guy and his crew?