no.stupid.answers

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!

Apparently Answers.com got a bit of design love from BrowserShots, which is a site looking “to make it[self] a most usable and searchable library for every web designer, whether for inspiration, learning or even capturing the latest trends on web design techs.”

You can check out the screenshot, color scheme and give the homepage design a rating yourself over at the BrowserShots page.

Yesterday the folks at Answers.com unveiled a new look and feel for the reference site. It seems to be a sort of meshing of the reference world that is Answers.com with the community Q&A aspect that is WikiAnswers. Well, they are ‘sister sites’ after all.

There are now three tabs to browse on the homepage, along with some featured questions and… yours truly, no.stupid.answers, featured right below. The homepage keeps the fun trivia spotlight of the old design in the first tab while highlighting the Question of the Day in the second tab. The third tab is all about community, where this blog’s Contributor Corner and What’s New columns are highlighted.

And that’s just the homepage… The topic pages have a new look and feel, too. Type in a topic, like say, blog, and you’ll see a fresh-looking page with a left-side navigation to quickly select which type of reference source you want to view.

So, it’s time for your comments. You know that feeling when you’ve gotten a makeover and some of your friends are gushing and squealing in utter delight and some of your friends are kinda like, “Oh wow… so in how long will those bangs grow out?”

Go on and leave a comment – how do you feel about the new layout? The new homepage hightlights? The new navigation for topic pages? The new Britney Spears album?

I can feel the seasons changing as spring peeks through the wintry clouds. And with spring comes new beginnings. Like makeovers. Or some kind of shopping spree. At the very least, switching your wardrobe to warm-weather clothes… or else it’s just time for some spring cleaning.

Start the spring ritual with your WikiAnswers Bio Page, which has been renovated with a classy-yet-fun look. It’s like a makeover/spree/spring cleaning for your own WikiAnswers real estate.

When you create a user name, you get a customizable Bio Page to publicize your experience, expertise and of course, your blog or website. Fill your Bio Page with background information, fun facts about yourself and links to your favorite sites. Every time you answer a question, your user name is linked in the question history.

Sign in to WikiAnswers and click My Bio Page on the left side menu. You can edit your page by taking advantage of the new display options available (including Professions and Hobbies), add photos and change the color scheme of your page.

…And speaking of top contributors, you gotta check out the brand new design for the WikiAnswers Top Contributors page! It highlights the top 100 contributors (overall) on WikiAnswers, as well as the top contributors by month and by category.

Thanks to our wonderful designer Denise, for once again lending her creative genius to the site!

Congrats to us! We managed to pull off this awesome new blog design, making no.stupid.answers official – and pretty.

Feel free to leave a comment saying you love it (or don’t – boo) and a suggestion or two for what we should add next.

Shout-out to Denise and Ari for all your help!