For today’s WikiAnswers Wednesday question, I’m going to go for painstakingly obvious. I think it goes well with my hazel eyes.
Is there a good social search engine where one can search and have questions answered at the same time?
Hmm… While I work that one out, I’d like to bring up an article I just read on the Reuters site: Answers.com sees growth in wiki responses. It’s a quick exploration into where Answers.com, with WikiAnswers by its side, is going as discussed by some of its head honchos.
“Somewhere between Google Inc and the community-generated Wikipedia, reference website Answers.com aims to build a new growth model.
The site has found its millions of users are keen to get community-written bits of knowledge, known as wikis, alongside its trusted encyclopedia entries.” (source)
Gotta love that explanation. A lot of times, when I’m hanging out with people and they ask me what I do, and
I mention WikiAnswers, and their faces get all crinkly like one of those mush-face dogs (see right), I explain it like this:
Me: “You know Wikipedia?”
Crinkly face: “Yes…”
Me: “You know how it’s an encyclopedia that anyone can edit?”
Crinkly face: “Ok…”
Me: “So WikiAnswers is a Q&A community, meaning it’s a giant database of questions and answers, contributed by people from all over the world and all kinds of experience. Everyone contributes a bit, creating one complete answer for each question. You can ask or answer anything you like.”
Crinkly face: “OoOOOOoOooOOOo…”
Back to the article:
“Both sites pull up answers based on a question posed by a user, compared with searches for individual keywords used on sites like industry leader Google.”
“Chief Executive Bob Rosenschein said the company would foster more “cross-pollination” between Answers.com and WikiAnswers.com, including a shared search bar.” (source)
Bringing the reference answers side together with the community-generated answers side sounds like a wonderful idea. It’s going to create a powerful force you might want to call a social search engine.
Hmm, so what was that WikiAnswers Wednesday question again?
