Slashdot Mirror
Top Q&A Sites Reviewed
prostoalex writes "MIT Technology Review runs a real-world test of top question and answer sites — AnswerBag, Amazon Askville, MSN Live Q&A, Wondir, Yahoo! Answers and Yedda. The sites are rated on the features and originality as well as availability of answers to the journalist's three questions: 'First, I searched each site's archive for existing answers to the question "Is there any truth to the five-second rule?" (I meant the rule about not eating food after it's been on the floor for more than five seconds, not the basketball rule about holding.) Second, I posted the same two original questions at each site: "Why did the Mormons settle in Utah?" and "What is the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich?" The first question called for factual, historical answers, while the second simply invited people to share their favorite sandwich-making methods and recipes." The results might be surprising to some readers. While it's generally believed that small startups are better at building efficient solutions, the leaders of the MIT Technology Review are all sites built by Internet giants — Yahoo! Answers, MSN Live Q&A and Amazon Askville all ranked above the competing sites."
It turns out "Just Google it." wasn't viewed as an actual answer.
No Ms. Dewey? Her looks should more than make up for her lack of answers.
> While it's generally believed that small startups are better at building ...if I ever need answers to trivial questions that any educated person should not need to ask. I suppose that these sites are probably pretty good for useless crap such as sports and celebrity trivia, too.
> efficient solutions, the leaders of the MIT Technology Review are all sites
> built by Internet giants -- Yahoo! Answers, MSN Live Q&A and Amazon Askville
> all ranked above the competing sites.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
But what is the meaning of life?
Helium has a pretty unique formula, as well as paying people based on peer review of their answers. I've been there for about a month, and made $1.50. Of course if I can lure more readers there, I'll make more $$. Specifically though, I like the way the answers "battle" against each other, so when you go there you can see the answers ranked in order of "goodness."
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Net newbies often have trouble coming up with good search terms. I tell them to type a plain english question into Google because more often than not that turns up the right answer on the first page. Try it with "Why does asparagus make my pee smell funny?" for example. That one actually gets the right answer in the first hit. Even when it wasn't explictly designed to do that, Google still wins it. Hmm... I wonder if you could design a google-based chatbot...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Can someone post a mirror for grilledcheese-contest.com. The wife called and that is what is for dinner, so I'd like to try something new.
The article gives an interesting perspective: can you get good answers out? But the reverse perspective is interesting to me: is it worth answering the questions?
I've been "playing" on Yahoo Answers for a few weeks. I've got a few areas of real expertise, as well as a general interest in, well, stuff. The points are a silly reward; it's not like I'm going to cash them in on a new washer-dryer. But it's just kinda cool to know that my answers are appreciated. And it's sometimes fun to have the questions drive a bit of random web-searching in topics that I'm interested in when I'm otherwise bored.
But like Slashdot, there are some trolls. They've just this week promised new tools against trolls, but without specifying what they are. It's unpleasant to read some asinine question, clearly written with the intent of pissing somebody off, or seeing how subtly they can ask a stupid question so that I don't feel justified in flagging it as offensive. No, it's not destroying my life, but it gets in the way of what I think of as a game.
And there are a number of silly questions. No, I'm not going to factor that equation for you; it's clearly your homework. If you'd asked for help on the concept I'd provide it, or even if you explained why you couldn't get this one out of the rest of them. But I'm not doing your homework for you.
How about asking each of the sites this simple question:
"Which is the best question answering site?"
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Ask my question to a bunch of 12 year olds posing as PhD holders? How can I lose!
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
I wonder what sort of answer that the author would have gotten if he had asked the 100 hour answer board at Brigham Young University which is located at theboard.byu.edu
The questions range from all sorts of topics, but do tend be Utah centric.
(Disclaimer: I am a BYU alum, but not a "board writer".)
I find that during the day, kids ask how to get around school firewalls and get to myspace. After school hours there are questions on how to customize my space or lots of Indians asking test questions. I speculate there's some pay for test thing going on.
On the points side, you can go back and select your own answer as the best answer. If no one else selects another answer, yours will be identified as the best answer even if it's crap.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Even when it wasn't explictly designed to do that, Google still wins it. Hmm... I wonder if you could design a google-based chatbot...
e fox-a&rls=org.debian%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=cfN&q =%22could+you+design+a+google-based+chatbot%3F%22& btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=fir
One site that seems to have a lot of very good, well-informed answers is Ask MetaFilter. There are certainly snarky, ill-informed and irrelevant answers a-plenty there, but there also seem to be a lot of very good, very useful answers as well.
I may have been too catty with my last response:
http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/catty.shtml
A: STFW, you lazy bum!
How does Yahoo compare to Experts-Exchange ? I used to like that site a lot, and I still use it, but their semi-recent redesign (filthy inline ads, sidebar ads, popup ads, light blue on slightly lighter blue text, ads between comments) has sent me searching for something better. But, I have to admit that the quality of the answers I get on Experts-Exchange is still superb.
>|<*:=
So, is this an ad for Yedda or Wondir? I can't tell, but the fact that Ask Metafilter isn't in the running suggests some kind of stacking or faulty methodology.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Using things like quotation marks, logical operators, and even more conveniently the 'minus sign' can trim down the results for a search engine that supports them from tens of thousands (or more) to maybe a few dozen key hits.
The "Google it" approach would probably have yielded results as good or better as most of the Q&A sites if the search terms had been entered correctly.
I did it for Johnny.
Just last night i was wondering just how DVD player can play games on my TV. (my neice got Deal or No Deal, not too bad) and googling got me nowhere. Wikipedia only had a list of companies doing it but no tech info. I might have to try again on some of these. I didn't know you could teach the DVD player some of those tricks. For example, after each round it shows the board and the amounts you picked fade out and it shows the previous amounts just like on the TV show. I wonder if anyone could point to how it does that.
:O
:(
:(
Interesting tech... a helluva workout for your DVD player tho
So much info out there, but so hard to find sometimes
Last week i wanted to know when the Barbie collector tins i gave my mom were made. The chocolate expired in feb 98, they are christmas themed and 97 seemed too short on dating. None on Ebay and no answers i could find elsewhere.
Google really fails on some of these, mostly i got a million sites trying to sell me a new barbie doll
.... of course.
No sig for now.
Google should integrate answers functionality into Google Groups (not the Usenet portion, though). The combination of specialization + economic incentive + the existing post rating system could be very formidable.
From their terms: "You grant Helium, and its affiliates, a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable, non-exclusive right and license to use, copy, modify, delete in its entirety, adapt, publish, translate, display, create derivative works from and/or sell and/or distribute content posted to Helium."
What we really need is a definitive article reviewing the top T&A sites!
Let's include all the corporate solutions and skip the most commonly used.
Dur.
-GiH
Ask Metafilter kicks the crap out of all of them. Ask Metafilter:these other clowns::Slashdot:Digg. More thoughtful replies, fewer testosterone-driven 15 year old posters.
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
You: anarchists
Cat: Libertarians are not anarchists.
You: you got that right sister
Cat: To do this, verify that the lock icon appears in the lower right corner of the Internet Explorer window.
You: i run linux you insensitive clod!
Cat: Our answers are usually geared towards putting the insensitive questioner in his or her place, but the fact is that sex with a fat partner can present challenges and/or require different techniques.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Admittedly, you may find some luck with the Wikipedia Reference Desk, but...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I'm not sure why this site is so frequently dismissed or ignored in these sort of polls and collections of answer sites, but I'd recommend it.
No. Because nobody else wanted it. By grilling them.
That is all.
I'm not convinced that the questions asked were the best kind to ask in a Q&A community. Frankly, anything that is purely factual seems best answered by Google or Wikipedia and far more easily/quickly.
Typing these queries into Google found answers to all of them (removing the results from the Q&A sites and related to the article) in the first 10 results.
I guess people really have gotten so lazy that sifting through a few search results is more work than waiting for a human being to go and do the same thing for you, and then copying and pasting the results into an "answer" on one of these Q&A sites (which is what a large number of the most active Q&A members do on most of these sites).
Uhh... the five second rule is not about "holding" it (was) about a player dribbling the ball without making any attempt at initiating the offense.
Sheesh...
As someone who's very close to this space, I can tell you that this review was about as shallow as they get. Not only did the reviewer spend no time comparing and contrasting the actual Q&A mechanisms, but he gave random points for random features, a no-no when doing objective reviews. There should be a set list of criteria that each site is compared against. He gave Yahoo Answers 3 points for features, with no real explanation beyond saying they have a "My QnA" page (which Answerbag does as well) and "users can choose and customize their own cartoon self-portraits". I can think of a lot of great features at Y!Answers, but I don't think I'd be handing out 3 points just for the avatars Yahoo has been using for years. Worse, he doesn't explain how he gives points for answer quality. In the Answerbag section, he says the answer about Mormons was "more or less in line with the best answers to this question at other sites", but he only gave it 1 point out of 3. What gives? And for our answer on how to make a grilled cheese sandwich (which seemed pretty good to me), he only gives it a 2 out of 3 with no explanation of where the other point went. What gives? Naturally, as the founder of Answerbag, I'm not claiming that I'm totally objective, but as someone with a background in journalism, I'd like to see a little effort and scientific process go into a review like this. Read a professional home audio review or a car comparison, and you'll see how a real comparison review should be written. I'd love to write a real, scientific review, but I doubt people would see it as very objective. ;)
The comparison in the article is kind of silly. It bothers me a little bit that just because something has the letters MIT on it it is perceived as being more interesting or important. If this had been a state school I doubt it ever would have been posted. Even the good engineering state schools dont get much coverage. When was the last time you saw a link to a student newspaper article appear on slashdot from Berkeley, UIUC, or Georgia Tech? Those schools only make it on here when there is "real" news for nerds happening there.
I think Captain Kirk blew up an android by asking it this question once. I'd hate to see the same thing happen to our internets.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the+answer+to +life%2C+the+universe%2C+and+everything&btnG=Googl e+Search
The Google knows all.
are answered at http://askjolene.com/
They missed the best one: Ask Metafilter . The nice thing about it is that you have to pay $5 to join the site, which automatically eliminates 99% of the trolls and morons.
qanda was very confusing as a tag. I'd rather have seen it as 'q&a'. I was thinking "Qanda? Isn't that an Australian airline or something?"
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
The results might be surprising to some readers. While it's generally believed that small startups are better at building efficient solutions, the leaders of the MIT Technology Review are all sites built by Internet giants Yahoo! Answers, MSN Live Q&A and Amazon Askville all ranked above the competing sites.
This comes as no suprise whatsoever. A Q&A site's success depends directly on how many people use it. The more people there are, the more questions and answers there are going to be. The larger the group, the more likely you will come up with unique and intelligent information. These internet giants already have millions of users to draw from, and many of them are the sort of people who are well prepared to participate in a site like that.
Smaller companies face a bigger challenge in attracting users, and without users the site flounders.
1.Mormons#Scholarly usage
2.Five-second rule#Research
3.Grilled cheese sandwich and Cookbook:Grilled_cheese_sandwich
When all else fails, Wikipedia:Reference desk
easy really.
.
. hmmm