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."

Apparently, Ask Slashdot didn't make the cut

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out "Just Google it." wasn't viewed as an actual answer.

Re:

[fullphaser]

yeah, but then you know that many characters in a search string, a bit tough and usually truncated google side.

Re:

[Giloo]

Well, maybe he uninstalled Google...

--
I can't search, I uninstalled Google. - P. Ducler

I'll remember this...

[John Hasler]

> 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. ...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.

Re:

[yusing]

Of course not everyone using these services are fully-educated persons yet. My dozen-hours experience with Yahoo Answers suggests that most users are K-12, with a few college frosh.

Hang On...

[makillik]

But what is the meaning of life?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

42

Re:

[Plutonite]

That Q almost caused me to flunk my last semester in college, and I'm a high honors grad. It's the shock you get when you realize there isn't any meaning at all. Nothing you can do truly matters or has "purpose". I know you were kidding, but this is the most depressing, madness-instilling question anyone can think of. If you're a deep enough thinker you can end up with a life of crime, ditch your career to sing in bars..etc.

Life is "wholesome" with friends, family, God, and so on... yet it is purely acciden

Helium

[fishdan]

Helium [helium.com] 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."

Re:

[vp_development]

I actually had not been to Helium in several months, because although I too liked the idea, the content there was dominated by foreign writers looking to make a quick $.35, which probably went a long way in their native land. The problem with that was that they were flooding the site with very poor content.

I was pleasantly surprised to follow your link and see that things have changed quite dramatically. I actually may send the basic computer security [helium.com] article to some people as a first line of answer t

No thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:

[FLEB]

So? Most public-posting sites have a policy similar to this. Without it, it's legally dubious if and how they can actually display your posts, and it keeps them from having to get permission for later uses. I'd be concerned if it said "exclusive", meaning you couldn't use it yourself, but this sort of thing is pretty par.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The very site we're on is different: comments are owned by the poster.

Re:

[FLEB]

Check section 6 of the Terms of Service linked at the bottom of the page. My Firefox is going buggy so it is not letting me copy or paste (or use apostrophes), but the TOS for this site has the same sort of terms.

Re:

[Kadin2048]

So, Mr. AC, I suppose that means we won't see you around Slashdot much either?

From the Slashdot/OSTG ToS:

In each such case, the submitting user grants OSTG the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to

My Advice to Net Newbies

[Greyfox]

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...

Apparently not

[gardyloo]

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...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=fire fox-a&rls=org.debian%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=cfN&q =%22could+you+design+a+google-based+chatbot%3F%22& btnG=Search [google.com]

Re:Apparently not -- revised

[gardyloo]

I may have been too catty with my last response:

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/catty.shtml [coredump.cx]

OT: fun with google chatbots..

[WillDraven]

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.

Re:

[Bigbutt]

I point newbies to wikipedia on many of the questions asked.

On the google front, I never knew they had an answers site. Publicity does help :)

[John]

Re:

[peragrin]

It's not an answers site per se. Just by typing in your question into the standard google search box, the way it queries it looks for all the words first. making such a simple question the most relevant of answers.

Of course search's should work like that. no complex search terms just ask it what you want. I routinely type in the name of what i am looking for, and then add wiki. wikipedia results are in the top 5 then. Plus you find so random wiki's that don't normally show up.

Re:

[iron-kurton]

Net newbies often have trouble coming up with good search terms

This is exactly why the question "is there any truth to the five-second rule" is not a fair measure of performance, in my opinion. Whenever you're dealing with spoken language, you are sure to encounter ambiguities. I agree, it is the program's creator's job to weed out the ambiguities, but it is virtually impossible to do so (let alone in many different languages), as there are many, many different ways to interpret a sentence -- just ask

Re:My Advice to Net Newbies

[Impeesa]

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.

This is pretty close to the best technique, but not quite there. Googling for the question will find you pages with the question. Googling for as much of the answer as you can give works even better. Compare "what is the average rainfall in the amazon basin?" to "the average rainfall in the amazon basin is".

Grilled Cheese.

[lexsco]

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 reverse perspective

[jfengel]

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.

I have an idea

[LaughingCoder]

How about asking each of the sites this simple question:

"Which is the best question answering site?"

Re:

[TubeSteak]

http://ask.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]
Duh :op

Don't do it!

[dexter riley]

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.

Hooray

[TodMinuit]

Ask my question to a bunch of 12 year olds posing as PhD holders? How can I lose!

Interesting

[portforward]

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".)

Yahoo! Answers

[Bigbutt]

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]

Where's AskMefi?

[jiawen]

One site that seems to have a lot of very good, well-informed answers is Ask MetaFilter [metafilter.com]. 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.

Q: What does STFW mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

A: STFW, you lazy bum!

Experts-Exchange ?

[Bugmaster]

How does Yahoo compare to Experts-Exchange [experts-exchange.com] ? 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.

Re:

[Bigbutt]

I think most of us here are reasonably adept at finding the answer without resorting to a pay site. I've had EE trickle up on the occasional search until I habitually tack on a -"experts-exchange" to my technical google searches. My daughter seems to like EE though but she's transitioning from helpdesk to a beginning sysadmin.

I'd say that a free site like Yahoo! Answers is probably worth about what you'd expect. I did ask one question about my guitar that was answered to my satisfaction (electrical problem

Re:

[AaronLawrence]

I'd rate Usenet (via Google Groups search) much more useful than most of the others...

Re:

[Elrac]

Hi Bugmaster,

just today I came across a solution to your problem with EE: It's Platypus, a script for GreaseMonkey, which is an addon for Firefox.
Briefly, Platypus allows you to repair a Web page/site in a point-and-click way, creating a script that is then run everytime you re-visit that page. So essentially, if you are a Firefox user, you can customize other peoples' Web sites to your satisfaction, including style changes to make them more readable. Highly recommended!

Astrosmell

[rhizome]

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.

Re:

[mandelbr0t]

There's absolutely no consistency to this guy's scoring at all. A couple memorable quotes:

...It was among the best answers I got from any of the other sites.

(referring to the question "Why did the Mormons settle in Utah?"). He points out that other sites gave him a couple of lame answers, and one of the other ones had a "factoid" (uncited fact?) that none of the other did. Those scored 2 and 3 out of 3 respectively, compared to 1 for having "one of the best answers". So having a bunch of crappy answers thrown in with a good one adds points? Make stuff up to improve fur

Learn to use search engines

[Four_One_Nine]

One of things that leads to too many people finding junk in their searches is that they don't understand the power of search engines. Google is (was?) truly innovative with the things they allow for searching. And it's not rocket science!

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.

Re:

[StikyPad]

Google didn't invent quotes, the minus sign or other logical search operators -- I was using those back when Altavista [archive.org] was king -- but their site:, inurl:, etc type searches are useful. In Firefox specifically, it's nice to be able to type something like moviename site:imdb.com and have the proper imdb movie page (usually) pop up. At any rate, the real innovation of Google was/is their ranking technique which, although abused, still provides highly relevant results.

Interesting Timing

[hurfy]

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

Re:

[Keruo]

As far as I understand, DVD games work with menu scripting languages.
It offers basic operations with disc, and setting certain values to control game state.
Saving state after removing the disc is impossible tho.
Grab dvdremake pro from dimadsoft [dimadsoft.com], and import the dvd to "see the code".
It won't be commented and it'll look something like:
1: R[0]=12
2: if hilighted (TRUE) goline 4
3: jump VTS 2
4: jump VTS 1

but if you read it through and figure what each variable does, it should make sense.

Re:

[Vintermann]

I think that gives a point to Keruo and "Ask Slashdot".

Google Groups + Google Answers

[Chris Chiasson]

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.

Re:

[jorghis]

Googles idea of using economic incentive really doesnt seem like a good one to me. I mean look at all the people willing to answer your questions for free on other websites! Adding the dollar amount only limits your user base. I always assumed that this was the primary reason it failed so badly when offerings from other companies flourished.

Re:

[Chris Chiasson]

Well, they could also give an option to post a zero dollar question -- like they already do...

Wikipedia!

[GodInHell]

I mean, Hello!?

Let's include all the corporate solutions and skip the most commonly used.

Dur.

-GiH

but Wikipedia [[WP:NOT|is not]] a Q&A site

[FooAtWFU]

Wikipedia is not [wikipedia.org] a Q&A site. It's an encyclopedia. It may be a good place to find answers for your arbitrary question, but it is not a question-and-answer site.

Admittedly, you may find some luck with the Wikipedia Reference Desk [wikipedia.org], but...

Re:

[Jugalator]

I think he meant that instead of asking questions, you can find your answers to many things on Wikipedia, without restorting to asking someone questions.

But yes, if the parent meant it as using it as a Q&A site, then you're of course correct.

Ask Metafilter

[PavementPizza]

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.

Re:

[rleamon]

Ask Metafilter (and Metafilter) are a lot more fun, too, even if you have to claw your way through a lot of smart, youngish ire.

Chacha it?

[Luminus]

I'm not sure why this [chacha.com] site is so frequently dismissed or ignored in these sort of polls and collections of answer sites, but I'd recommend it.

Re:

[Jugalator]

I find their idea innovative too, and perhaps helpful especially to those not used to making well-formed queries. Besides, it can be a matter of convenience too. Sending away a question there for someone else to find something you believe might be annoying, and doing something else in another application meanwhile. Having said that, I also found Something Awful's coverage [somethingawful.com] of the site funny too. :-)

The answers...

[frank_adrian314159]

No. Because nobody else wanted it. By grilling them.

Q&A or search?

[DocJohn]

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).

 

"not the basketball rule about holding" ??

[Black-Man]

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...

Very shallow review

[GX-Wemmick]

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. ;)

fluff story, but its got the letters MIT

[jorghis]

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.

So?

[jrmafia]

Still, none of these beat Wikipedia in terms of speed and reliability (which isn't perfect, of course).

I rated the answers to this question purely according to their mouthwateringness.

Forgive me if I'm not the first to point this out, but this comparison article is unscientific muck. But, I would expect that from someone who relies on invisible sources of information.

Re:

[GX-Wemmick]

The significance of social Q&A sites is not how they compare against Wikipedia, it's for things that Wikipedia can't handle. You can't ask the following questions at Wikipedia and expect to get much:

- How do I get a stain out of my jeans?
- How do I deal with a cheating husband?
- What should I know when shopping for a digital camera?
- Where's a good Chicago-style pizza joint in LA?

Social Q&A is about people helping others with advice and knowledge that isn't easy to find in an ordinary search. Anot

AskMe

[exhilaration]

They missed the best one: Ask Metafilter [metafilter.com]. 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.

Slashdot Tagging

[mandelbr0t]

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

No surprise

[vga_init]

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 l

Wikipedia

[quiddity]

1.Mormons#Scholarly usage [wikipedia.org]

2.Five-second rule#Research [wikipedia.org]

3.Grilled cheese sandwich [wikipedia.org] and Cookbook:Grilled_cheese_sandwich [wikibooks.org]

When all else fails, Wikipedia:Reference desk [wikipedia.org]
easy really.