no.stupid.answers

I have to admit: I love to punish content by nailing a good punchline or two. I also love to have pun when writing up posts here on no.stupid.answers.

So, naturally, I was excited to discover that this week’s Featured Contributor has a pun-oriented sense of humor: Meet Mikipedia!

How does Mikipedia spend his time on Answers.com? By never losing sight of the bigger picture: that sharing knowledge makes the world a brighter place!

Seriously…what goes around karmas around… Here’s more:

What is your Answers.com user name and the history behind it?

Mikipedia. It’s a portmanteau of Mike and Wikipedia, and reflects how (over the years) I’ve somehow managed to learn a little something about almost anything.

Are you a Floating or Category Supervisor?

I’m a Floating Supervisor; it best suits my limited time and general-knowledge bias.

What is your age?

I’m 43.

Would you care to tell us about your family?

I’m unmarried, with four nephews and a niece.

Where do you live, how long have you lived there and why do you like the area?

I’ve lived on Long Island my entire life; but I’ve been considering a change of scene. For one thing, my odd hobby (duckpin bowling; see below) is a good 2 hours’ drive each way, even when traffic is being kind.

Where did you grow up and do you have any special memories of your childhood?

I spent most of my childhood reading. I still read for fun; though these days it’s more likely to be wikis and websites than novels.

What educational information would you like to share?

I received my A.S. (Associate of Science degree) in Business, magna cum laude, in 1987. Not long after that, I left college to enter the real world.

What are some of your past and present occupations?

I’ve been a Taekwondo instructor and the assistant manager of a bookstore. Currently, I’m a professional movement director (which is like a gym teacher, but for preschoolers) and I help manage a bowling alley.

What are your key areas of knowledge, interest or expertise?

I’m the very definition of eclectic; it comes from four decades of reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. And that’s not even counting my addiction to documentary television.

Do you have any collections or hobbies?

My personal library rivals some bookstores: at last count, it contains over 6,000 books, including nearly 500 manga. I also collect odd and unusual bowling pins; the oldest is from the 1920s.

What do you like to do for recreation?

I love to bowl: both standard tenpin bowling (in which I average over 210) and the much harder, and much less common, duckpin bowling (for which I travel to Connecticut once a week to bowl in a league there).

What are a few random facts about yourself?

I own my own business, the aforementioned movement program: my clients (preschools, camps, and daycare centers) hire me to come in once a week and engage the children in directed play, which helps them develop their motor skills – not to mention, showing them how much fun movin’ and groovin’ can be!

Do you have any special talents you’d like to share?

I can read at over 1,300 words-per-minute.

What accomplishments are you proud of?

I have a 3rd degree black belt in Taekwondo. And I have three perfect 300 games, the first of which was in 2001.

What are your special goals or dreams?

I’m working on my first novel, as well as a book of children’s poetry.

How would you describe yourself or personality?

Quirky and something of a perfectionist; with a deep love of puns and a warped (though never malicious) sense of humor. Some of my friends call me the world’s tallest 5-year-old.

What brought you to Answers.com?

As a trivia buff, I’ve long been hooked on Answers.com’s Answer of the Day page. At the time, there was a small news feed in the corner with recently asked and recently answered questions. One day, one of the answers was so out-and-out wrong that it actually offended me; I registered to correct it, and the rest is history.

What keeps you coming back to Answers.com?

I can share my love of general knowledge; I’ve been told I have a talent for explaining things clearly… and I even get credit for fixing any grammar and spelling mistakes I happen to spot!

What is your favorite Answers.com activity?

Providing correct information and correcting misinformation. Once a teacher, always a teacher, I suppose.

Do you want to be interviewed for the Contributor corner? Just leave a comment below and we’ll get to work.

I learned a surprising fact today. I am one of the millions of people around the world who cannot spell chlorophyll. Yep. Moi. I discovered this little known fact while doing a search on Answers.com for words that rhyme with this obscurely spelled dictionary enigma. It started off with much confidence…cloraphyl (negative), quickly morphed to chloraphyl (yeah right) and escalated to an embarrassing caloraphil (at this point the search bar was begging me to leave). Now you might be wondering why I was so interested this particular search. It actually had to do with this week’s Featured Contributor, Re723phyl. I thought I would get quirky and rhyme out an intro. And the only word that came to mind was chlorophyll (which has two “L’s”, not one – shame on me). But enough dwelling on my spelling inadequacies – here is more on this week’s awesome, super intelligent and all around great Featured Cloraphyl – I mean Contributor. Introducing the wickedly cool Re723phyl!

What is your Answers.com user name and the history behind it?

Re723phyl – We had a small, Fiat X-19. Because of its’ mileage, we had a personalized plate, REPHYL (1st 2 letters of mine and 1st 4 letters of my wife, Phyllis’ names) as phonetically similar to REFILL (the gas tank).

Are you a Floating or Category Supervisor (which categories)?

I’m the Category Supervisor of Unemployment.

What is your first name?

Rex

What is your age?

72 years young

Would you care to tell us about your family?

I’ve been married over 51 years to my wonderful wife, Phyllis. We had 6 children, 10 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.

Do you have any pets?

We have 2 Yorkies, 4 cats, a parrot and pond full of Choi fish.

Where do you live, how long have you lived there and why do you like the area?

We have lived in Las Vegas the past 49 years. It’s vibrant (grown from 50,000 when we moved here, to 2 million) and very diversified. The weather is perfect with no calamities suffered by elsewhere.

Where did you grow up and do you have any special memories of your childhood?

I grew up in Washington. I loved school and would have been a professional student, if there had been such a thing.

What educational information would you like to share?

I received my Bachelor of Science (Business & Economics) and MBA at UNLV and later became president of the Alumni Association.

What are some of your past and/or present occupations?

I was the first Commissioner of Consumer Affairs for the state, taught Real Estate at the University and Money and Banking at the community college. I’ve sold real estate, insurance, investments and been in law enforcement, a lab technician and in electronics (US Navy). Retired for the last 4 years.

What are your key area(s) of knowledge, interests or expertise?

Business, math, economics, authored “The Problem: Unemployment or Underemployment?” for WICHE. I saw no future in the work I was doing before starting college (a security guard raising 6 children) and had an aptitude for the subjects I took. I finished both degrees in 3 1/2 years while working full time.

Do you have any collections or hobbies?

I have thousands of books on all non-fiction topics (I’m an “information junky”). Before my eyesight started failing, I built model sailing ships.

What do you like to do for recreation?

I love debating, solving problems, working puzzles, and doing Answers.com Supervisor functions.

What are a few random facts about yourself?

I’m learning to be a fair cook.

Do you have any special talents you’d like to share?

Practical and methodical problem solving, efficiency.

What accomplishments are you proud of?

I helped create and enforce many of the state’s consumer protection laws and was one of the founding fathers of the local non-profit Consumer Credit Counseling Service.

What are your special goals or dreams?

To make the world a better place by helping people solve their problems through education, information, motivation and the means to do so.

How would you describe yourself or personality?

A stickler for details, results oriented, unwilling to compromise on honesty and fair play.

What brought you to Answers.com?

Surfing the ‘Net’ at Wikipedia and Google for answers to a question. I became acquainted with a wonderful Mentor, Stupid little Genius (“the rest is history” as they say).

What kept you coming back to Answers.com?

I saw an opportunity for improving its already huge potential for helping people all over the world through voluntary (the best) means of addressing vital issues of our times.

What is your favorite Answers.com activity?

Researching answers to very good questions, improving challenging and very interesting questions and improving their mostly good, but sometimes confusing answers.

Wow. WikiAnswers made it to the top 20 Web 2.0 sites as counted by Hitwise. And, look at that, it even placed higher than just being at #20.

This is so huge. What an honor to make it to the top Web 2.0 sites, along with MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia…

What Heather Hopkins of Hitwise did was include sites that “enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.” The percentages you see are market share.

Fun fact: According to Hitwise’s numbers, WikiAnswers’ percentage growth is much higher than anybody else’s in this list; nearly 3 times higher than the next biggest jumper!

So how long do you think it is before WikiAnswers bumps out MySpace?

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?

This week, Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers Corp, took a minute to explain WikiAnswers in depth to Fred Fishkin of Bloomberg Radio. You can listen here in MP3 format (try this if using Windows Media Player). Or read his own words:

“WikiAnswers is in the spirit of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as everybody knows, is the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Anybody can edit it. You can edit it. If you see a mistake or want to enrich a page, you can make the Wikipedia page better. Of course, there’s back and forth, you can also vandalize a page. But typically, on the average, the quality of a Wikipedia page goes up over time. And that’s why it’s such a trusted, useful source of information.

Well, we are not the Wikipedia of encyclopedias, we are the Wikipedia of online Q&A. That means that if you have a question, you ask it of our community, you can go to WikiAnswers.com, and type in a question. Anything. It could be health related. It could be relationships. It could be automobiles. It doesn’t matter. You ask a question and other people will answer it.”

As WikiAnswers grows, a lot of people seem to be getting it confused with Wikipedia. The two sites are both wikis, growing based on contributors lending knowledge. Like Bob said, though, WikiAnswers is in a Q&A format, differing from the encyclopedic route of Wikipedia.

Over the weekend, we’ve had plenty of bloggers sharing the info they’ve learned on WikiAnswers. From singers to snowstorms, cars to chickens and the ever-tasty (yet calorific) New York bagel:

• “Hey There Delilah” singer, Tom Higgenson of the Plain White T’s, is explored by Meanspeed Music Review, where his music is examined and his age is questioned (and he’s a lot older than you’d think…)
• Who knew it could lightening during a snowstorm? Spunky Mommy didn’t, but now she does!
• It’s a little depressing, but at The Moral Equivalent of War, we learn how many cars there are in the United States… and the number is simply astounding.
• Fightin’ Mad Mary wonders how many calories are in a New York bagel… But they’re so good, maybe I’d rather not know.
• One of allscan.org‘s Friday Factoids this week: There are more chickens than people in the world. I guess it’s time to beware the Great Chicken Revolt that so many have predicted.

And, lastly, Answers.com was listed on Myke’s Weblog as one of the 20 Web References Beyond Wikipedia… Which is perfect, since Answers.com proudly includes Wikipedia as part of its resources, along with over 200 other titles… Thanks for the recognition, Myke!