no.stupid.answers

Elisabeth at Web 2.0 newbie diary lends her opinion on librarians participating on Q&A sites like WikiAnswers:

“I think it is very important that libraries get involved in answering questions, so that people remember that this is what we do. The difference in quality between the librarian’s answers and other answers was interesting.”

The WikiAnswers folks couldn’t agree more, as commented by Ksmail, one of WikiAnswers’ top Supervisors. WikiAnswers has become a top destination for the librarians participating in the Slam the Boards project. We hope librarians continue to contribute their knowledge and expertise to the fastest growing wiki Q&A site!

WikiAnswers has teamed up with Itamar Medical — a world-leading developer of cardiac diagnostic equipment — to spread cardiovascular awareness by pumping the Cardiovascular Health category with new questions, answers and edits. The experts at Itamar Medical are officially Supervising the category, contributing their professional knowledge to growing cardiovascular Q&A.

Here are some of Itamar Medical’s contributions so far:

• How do horror movies affect a person’s heart rate?
• Is it good to be able to see your heart beating hard when you work out and less when you aren’t active?
• Where can you find a chart of average heart rates?

This is an excellent way to get experts on a topic to contribute to WikiAnswers Q&A: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. When you use your Bio Page to promote yourself, and then answer questions in your field, you gain credibility and a fresh audience. Not to mention that all the curious people waiting for information are getting quality, thought-out answers directly from the experts.

Are you a professional who might be interested in covering a WikiAnswers topic in your field? If you’d like this kind of opportunity, leave a comment.

Last week, Crystal announced the 1st Annual WAmmy Awards winners here on no.stupid.answers. In this season of constant awards shows, I thought I’d take a step back and explain why we at WikiAnswers wanted to show our appreciation through an online awards ceremony of our very own.

First of all, the WAmmys concept was developed by no other than Brave3, one of our most involved Supervisors. The idea was to share our appreciation so that everyone on and off WikiAnswers can see and understand all the hard work our dedicated group of Supervisors do throughout the year.

This is not your ordinary awards show, either; we’re not bogged down by writers’ strikes or heavy ball gowns. Instead, our winners wear their user names with pride as well as their own award badges.

In addition, winners got to leave their ‘acceptance speeches’ on the awards page - without having to worry about time running out!

It was a fun process to get these awards up and running, and, of course, you can see all the winners here.

Click on the names of the winners to see their bio pages and award ribbons.

Meanwhile, start racking up the answers for next year. Congratulations, all!

Our fantastic, wonderful Supervisor WikiWand posted a series of questions and answers on the site this past week that all have something to do with communicating and wiki-ing effectively with other Supervisors.

One of the questions I really like is: Are there rules of courtesy between WikiAnswers Supervisors?

The simple answer is, no. There are no written rules, as we have always tried to maintain a fun, community-driven site; a site built on collaboration and free from endless policies and guidelines. Boxing gloves have never been required and we certainly don’t plan on promoting any ring action in the near future. So remember to keep it real… On and off WikiAnswers, a little bit of nice goes a loooooong way.

…oh where, oh where does it go? If you’ve been singing the blues over WikiAnswers categorization, you’re not alone. We all have those moments when we ponder over where to place a question. Should it go in Grilling, Recipes… both? Would it be better to place it in Miscellaneous, and just let someone else tackle it? What if there is no perfect category?

Don’t fret. Here are some pointers on getting that question into the right category (or categories) the first time around:

1. Familiarize yourself with the current category tree. Do not assume that a category does not exist as the tree is constantly growing. At first, this might be a little overwhelming, but as time passes you will become more familiar with the tree and recognize immediately what might be a good fit for a misplaced question.
2. Explore possible question placements from different angles. For example, if you have a question about the human body that doesn’t seem to fit into Health, take a look at Science. It might be perfectly suited for Human Anatomy.
3. Leave a message for the category Supervisor or post a message on the Super Forum. Note: Always link the question of concern to better assist in this process.
4. Often using AnswerTips™ can point you in the right direction. Just double-click on any keyword in the question and see what comes up.
5. If the question truly has no home and there are many others with similar qualities, request that a new category be added to the tree.
6. In most cases, Miscellaneous should be used as a last resort. For those questions that are harmless yet will most likely never have a topic that they fit into – opt for Harmless Nonsense - Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?. Unanswerable Questions to Edit, is reserved for questions that cannot be answered in their current condition and when there is not enough information included for someone else to fix - Why did this happen in WW2?.

Once you’ve found a logical ‘home’ for a question:

1. Place it in the most specific topic as possible. For example, a question about Zebras should be placed in Zebras, not Animal Life, Mammals, Land Mammals, etc.
2. If a question fits logically into two separate unrelated topics feel free to add both. “What is the estimated Zebra population in Ethiopia?” should be placed in Zebras and Ethiopia.

(A big thanks to our wonderful Senior Super Ksmail (Ken) for collaborating with me on this important post… You da’ man, KS!)