no.stupid.answers

I love the smell of wrapping paper in the morning.

Well, who doesn’t? We just unwrapped these brand new features on Answers.com, and unlike a bratty 2-year-old, I’m even willing to share what’s inside:

Find friends!

Search for other Answers.com members on any bio page.  The best way to take advantage of this feature is to search with keywords for hobbies, professions, interests – for example, search for “knowledge ninjas” and guess who shows up?

More messages!

Now when you view your message board, you can check out the site-wide message bar right above. That way you can flip through (using the arrows to the right and left of the messages) and learn what’s new on the site, helpful pages and the latest contests. Thanks to Mr. Mystery for the suggestion!

Tag, you’re linked!

When signed in, your username listed at the top of the lefthand Tools Menu now links to your bio page as opposed to the WikiAnswers main page.

No shame in checking yourself out once in a while, right?

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of new features cropping up across Answers.com (namely within WikiAnswers). Here’s a breakdown of some of the new stuff – and why the changes are so awesome.

Question Editing

Editing a long question has been made super-simple. Now when you work on editing a question, you can see the entire text of the question at once instead of needing to scroll back and forth for long wording:

Lots of folks were working hard on question editing, and making changes to longer questions was a hassle when you couldn’t see the whole question at once and had to move back and forth across text. Thank goodness for the bird’s eye view!

Top Answerers

On the leader boards you can now hover over any username to see the number of contributions the user has put in during the period shown on the specific leader board. Puts it all in a bit more perspective that way and gives you a number to beat!

New data has also been added where you can see historical data for specific kinds of contributions. For example, you can see who did the most edits in July 2009 with the calendar tool at the bottom of the Edits board page. So relive your best months whenever you feel like it!

Share on Google Buzz

Share your favorite Answers.com Q&As on Google Buzz, the latest ‘it’ social sharing service:

Yep, Google Buzz is all the buzz and now you can share your favorites from Share button on any question or topic page. It’s as simple as any of the other sharing options included in Answers.com’s share feature.

Follow us

Follow Answers.com wherever you like to be, whether Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or all three! Now a quick and easy click (or three) from the homepage.

Related Answers

My personal favorite from the latest new features? That has to be the all-new related answers module now found at the bottom of answered and unanswered questions:

There are so many reasons this feature rocks; where do I start… Getting more information than you bargained for when you ask for a question? Or when you get to an unanswered question, you may still find relevant information in the Related Answers below? The fact that finding similar questions to merge has never been easier? All in all, it just makes every Q&A page a richer experience.

And now for Part 2/3 of the WikiAnswers Town Halls. Members of the Answers Corp staff – Alan, Shaya, Yuval, and Gil – discuss several WikiAnswers site features, including catch-alls, contributions, Topicana and… an identity crisis :

Stay tuned for Part 3/3, Q&A about the company, at 9pm EST…

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!

I love the ‘R’ word. That’s right: release. There’s just nothing like waking up in the morning, stretching, opening a browser to WikiAnswers and noticing that the WikiAnswers team has put out a release of new features and site updates while I was sleeping.

• The WikiAnswers homepage got a minor face lift with this new release, including a listing of recent questions with their category and time of asking.
• Check out the holiday-themed tag cloud on the homepage and Browse Categories.
• More reasons to log in! The blue Tools Menu has been completely revamped in a more organized style.
• Think you’ve reached the limit of contributor-level badges? They no longer top out at Platinum: start working towards becoming a Ruby contributor.



• There is now a spell checker in the answer form; before you post your answer, click the ABC button at the end of the menu and make your answer even more perfect.
• Feel the love, share the love: Join the Community Outreach program and reach a whole new level of participation.
• Cleaning up clearly: A new warning feature for Supervisors allows for organized and effective vandal patrol.

A whole bunch of new features and pretty touches went live on WikiAnswers today, but one that I am particularly fond of is the new layout for the Browse Categories page. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

You may or may not have hung out in that part of wiki-town before, but you should definitely stop by for the tag cloud, the Newest Categories list, the detailed categories tree, but most of all, the Find As You Type-supported Find a Category feature.

That baby comes equipped with all the categories on WikiAnswers. All you need to do is start typing the first letters of the category you seek and it pops right up in a suggested list below the box. Much like the Answers.com version on the homepage and beyond. Works great if you’re not sure what you’re looking for and you want to find obscure categories you’ve never come across before.

Here are some other great features that just went live today:

• You can now view Recent Site Changes based on all users’ contributions, only registered users’ contributions, or only guest users’ contributions.
• Fancy shmancy new message board design. Ooooh yeah.
• There is now an animated New Message icon when you receive – you guessed it – a new message on your message board. As one product manager said, “Its mouth opens and closes. It’s like a man-eating envelope.” Just be careful not to stick your finger inside that little guy…

As you know, WikiAnswers is based on the wiki concept (anyone from anywhere can add to or edit answers) and answers are grown collaboratively over time by the community. This is the cool new world of user-generated content – where you are the writer, editor and publisher!

But we’re all human – at least most of us – and we do make mistakes. Come on, you know what I’m talking about. When was the last time you spelled definitely as definately or used their instead of they’re? It happens.

There are also those lurking among us who enjoy nothing better than having a good time at the expense of others. On WikiAnswers, that often comes in the form of posting useless, offensive or inflammatory answers or remarks.

So what happens when you come across a question whose answer leaves little to be desired?

You can edit it directly or Flag for Improvement! This handy new link located on the left in the menu area allows you to mark a Q&A as one that could use some TLC. This is especially useful when you are in a hurry or simply don’t have the knowledge required to improve an answer.

When you click on the link, you are presented with the following pop-up:

You can choose one or more of the options listed and even place a detailed comment as to why you are marking an answer as needing improvement. These flagged Q&As (little outlaws!) can be accessed here or you can Browse by Category and see only those Q&As in a particular topic area.

See something you want to clean up?Simply click on the Q&A, select Improve Answer and make your improvements. When you are done editing, remove the flags and comments related to the changes you made by clicking off the little checked boxes or selecting Edit Flags.

So the next time you come across something questionable or in need of some help, don’t turn a blind eye – remember to Flag for Improvement.

Every edit goes a looooong way…