Now that Yahoo Answers is dead, who will answer crazy questions?
Today is the last day anyone is allowed to post new questions to Yahoo Answers, so where will the totally clueless questioners go? I'm not talking about people with thoughtful questions or even homework issues -- I mean the askers who wonder, "Do you think humans will ever walk on the Sun?" or "Why doesn't the image move when I print a gif?"
Answers ( 1 )
I know you're joking but this question is actually quite serious. ^_^
Yahoo Answers downfall was always, from the beginning, inevitable because there was no moderation. This is also true of LinkedIn Answers, which a great many professional well-educated adult powerful men could not distinguish from the "help desk" and were endlessly rude to the help, which was other LI users. Or MySpace or LiveJournal or Facebook, or any platform where the worst takes over almost immediately.
Helping humans is a deeply time and training intensive task. That is why therapy, medicine, and law are degreed occupations. Also, interestingly, librarianship.
Without well-trained moderators to watch over any group of people, to point them in the right direction for finding things and explaining how to behave - which is endless and utterly thankless task, people HATE being told to be less rude - then the loudest person in the room starts to scream and drowns everyone else out.
When no moderators are there to combat the waves of endless contempt people have for one another, the endless ignorance and lack of education, those things overwhelm anything else.
Quora chose quantity over quality and, as a result, I am here. They could have really built something unique and interesting...but that kind of platform is not scaleable. It takes massive investment in human infrastructure. Right now Sage is a nice quiet place to be. I guarantee that if it becomes popular, you will see those stupid questions, followed by endlessly unhappy and unpleasant ones. Ignorance and lack of education...and their attendants bias and loathing are endemic, globally.
We all end up answering stupid questions, eventually. I know about community lifecycle so I end up answering this question...a lot. It all seems obvious - to me - because I have seen communities rise and fall online since the early 1990s. In the end it always comes down to the fact that humans are not easy and computers are not sufficient. Social platforms will always fall to genuine and feigned ignorance, because those are easy and profitable.