no.stupid.answers

Topicana is one of our most beloved automated bots on Answers.com. Day or night, you can find her tirelessly assigning categories to unclassified questions.  This is based on a complex algorithm which determines the categories that are most commonly associated with other questions that contain the same keywords.

While Topicana’s assignments are not always perfect, you’ll usually find they’re right on target!  If you notice Topicana consistently miscategorizing a certain type of question you can recategorize a batch of them to the proper categories.  That will enable the bot to “learn” the proper places for such questions and place them properly in the future!

We recently secured an exclusive interview with Topicana about her work on Answers.com and there were some startling revelations!  Read on…

What other Answers.com bots are you friends with?

Well, Duke of URL has been linked with me on more than occasion.  But we never even got to have a cup of Java together before he was taken to be debugged.

Some supers have claimed that you’re working just to see your name all over Recent Site Activity.  How do you respond to that?

I categorically deny that statement.  Next topic.  ;)

Do you speak any interesting languages?

I’m glad you asked.  I’m bilingual, being fluent in both PHP and javascript languages.

What is your favorite music?

Heavy Metal is near and dear to my heart but lately I’ve had the “Happy Birthday” song in my head for some reason.

Do you have any pets?

Of course!  I have tons of cats and I enjoy taking care of them.

So next time you see Topicana categorizing feel free to drop her a line on her message board.  Just don’t expect her to respond.  She’s not one to go off topic.

What’s on your mind? Allow me to share what’s on mine… as well as the collaborative mind of the community-at-large.

Here are some of the latest Hot Topics being worked on by the WikiAnswers community:

• Haiti
• Renewable Energy
• Oscars
• Super Bowl
• Organic Food
• Iran
• Justin Bieber
• Tiger Woods
• Snow and Ice
• Lady Gaga
• MP4 Players
• Resume Writing
• Allergies

Do you have what to add? Visit those categories and add your answers!

Congrats! WikiAnswers’ categories turned 6,001 today.

Some of the newest categories include: Boxing Day, Walgreens, Computer and Internet Fraud, N-Dubz, iPhone 3G, The Difference Between, Spotify, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Sarah Jane Adventures, Peace, and… Parrots.

I don’t think categories come any more diverse than that…

Check out the full list.

While some contributors attend the Answers Summit this weekend, how about playing to win in the Holiday AnswerThon?

This is not your typical AnswerThon. Aside from having fabulous prizes on offer – including a first prize worth $500 – this contest has a new twist. You must answer the most questions in a 48 hour period in specific, holiday-themed categories. Those categories include:

• Holidays and Traditions
• Food and Cooking
• Shopping
• …and all sub categories falling under them.

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!

If you’ve been counting down to Valentine’s Day, you are nearly there. And if you’ve been trying to forget Valentine’s Day – sorry, but it’s one more day till that can truly happen.

February 14th: A day to strike terror in the hearts of men and girlfriends. Will he get you a gift? Will she like what you picked out? What’s the point of this holiday anyway?

I can’t offer you tips on gifts, or much history for that matter, but I do know who can… There are not one, but two WikiAnswers categories catering to your Valentine Q&A needs: Valentine’s Day and Valentine’s Day Gift Giving.

Here are a handpicked few:

• What is the origin of Valentine’s Day?
• When was Valentine’s Day first celebrated?
• How many people get engaged on Valentine’s Day?
• What are creative Valentine’s Day gift ideas?
• What flowers other than roses are appropriate to give on Valentine’s Day?
• What do boys want for Valentine’s Day?