no.stupid.answers

Grab some popcorn and ease back on that chair: We just posted the video below on YouTube to share with the masses. It’s “an entertaining overview of WikiAnswers, where people answer questions about things they know and ask about things they don’t.”

Love it? Rate it!

The American University of Rome website did it. Catalogablog did it. Tons of other bloggers have done it.

What have they done?

Added AnswerTips functionality to their blogs.

What do I mean?

Double-click any word on this page to find out.

What are you going to do next?

Get AnswerTips and keep your readers on your own site!

Let’s talk about Today’s Highlights.

It’s a daily updated feature from Answers.com that offers a spotlight, featured question, today’s birthdays, today in history and more, right from the homepage. You could say it’s like taking your daily dose of Vitamin T: ‘t’ for trivia and ‘vitamin’ because it’s good for you.

You could also take the trivia you learn and finally have something to contribute to the water cooler conversations going on right outside your cubicle. Don’t be shy; just lean over there and sing ‘happy birthday’ to Elton John, Sarah Jessica Parker and Aretha Franklin or mention that today, in 1328, Robert the Bruce became king of the not-yet-independent Scotland.

Now let’s talk specifically about today’s highlight.

First of all, I wrote the Spotlight, so I can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t fall madly in love with it right when you start reading.

Secondly, it covers the topic of wikis, which we discuss here a lot (being WikiAnswers gurus and all). I’ll be honest, when I first toyed around with the whole wiki thing, I was confused and a little skeptical; after all, why should I write something if it can be edited by anyone later on?

But once I got into it, it made a lot of sense. I know a little bit about a topic, Timmy knows a little something more, Samantha adds some personal experience… Collaboration is for the greater good, and like the Spider-man movies have taught me, the greater good is worth fighting for.

Thank you Answers.com Editorial Team, for serving fresh Today’s Highlights every single day; thank you Ward Cunningham, for developing wiki technology; thank you WikiAnswers, for having the courage to fight the good fight.

WikiAnswers got a big fat biographical interview yesterday on AltSearchEngines, a blog covering the growing search engine scene.

While I might characterize WikiAnswers as less a search engine and more a directory of Q&A, there is a strong aspect of search that has been improved in recent weeks.

One of the unique things about WikiAnswers is that it utilizes the wiki format, creating a new page for every new question - unless the question is asked again, in which case you’ll get directed to the existing page. From there you can get the answer and add on to it if you know any more information.

Using smart language technology, the site searches its listing of Q&A to find questions that closely match what you’ve asked. If there is no exact match (which might even be the same question in different words) then you get a list of close matches. You can choose one of them as your question or ask your question separately.

So perhaps WikiAnswers may be viewed as a search engine of sorts - a self-growing search engine, that can only get better and better as you ask and answer more and more questions.

As Yoni Greenbaum, blogger of editor on the verge, writes: Don’t let your lack of time hurt your readers! He’s added the AnswerTips feature to his site - like the NYTimes and CBS News before him - in order for readers to be able to double-click any word and get a quick definition. Comes in handy for the classic blogger dilemma: don’t feel like linking definitions but don’t want to lose readers, either.

Never heard of that dilemma before? Well, I kinda just made it up. But not really, because clearly Yoni has experienced it. Eradicate the possibility of losing site visitors because of linking laziness: AnswerTips-enable your website!

Folks often wonder how long it will take to get their question answered once posted on WikiAnswers. Truth be told, it varies considerably. Your question might receive an answer immediately – within hours or minutes - or it could take awhile. It all depends on how hard your question is to answer and who out there is generous enough to tackle it. But there are some simple steps that you can take to improve the timeliness of receiving an answer.

1. Make sure your question is clear and legible. Folks can’t and won’t answer your question if they don’t understand it. Before submitting it, double check for accuracy. It should be a complete sentence, not a fragment. For example, ask “How do you change a tire on a Jeep Liberty?” and not “Change Jeep tire?” Also avoid complex questions with many parts. Asking “How do you change the left front tire if it went flat on Route 66 in the rain and you’ve never done it before but want to learn please thank you?” may not generate a quick response.
2. Place your question in the appropriate category. Proper placement gets your question in front of the people most likely to answer it. So if you’re asking about something related to an indoor palm tree chances are that placing it in Houseplants will generate an answer ten times faster than placing it under Coin Collecting.
3. Ask a Supervisor to feature your question on WikiAnswers and Answers.com home pages. They are happy to do so and will often follow-up with you to make sure that you are satisfied with the answer received.

Out of courtesy, try to make sure that your question is specific enough to answer, yet general enough to be applicable to other people with similar questions.