I learned something useful about the way WebAnswers works. The site creates much of its own content in the form of robot questions. I knew of this category before but didn’t know how to recognize them. Now I do. So when possible, I avoid answering them for two reasons: the best answer is never awarded and the traffic tends to be minimal. That doesn’t mean the question can’t be legitimate, interesting, or useful or that I might not have a well thought-out answer worth contributing. Nor does it mean that I might not earn some residual income from answering (which is all that I get out of awarded answers for that matter). The biggest reason is that the bot questions are culled from other Internet question-and-answer sites and so are derivative and without authorship. They are at small remove from content farms, which I blogged about here.
What that means for my participation at WebAnswers is that I am finding it harder to locate questions to which I want to contribute an answer. I’ve already steered clear of an inexhaustible stream of questions about medical and legal issues, pregnancy, custody, pets, and favorites. The bot questions (now that I recognize them as such) further reduce my activity potential, which has been more than a little questionable anyway in terms of the reward-to-effort ratio and my association with other regular contributors whose expertise is often unclear despite some impressive numbers.
Nevertheless, these are my latest awarded answers:
- Who has commented about ”the bimbo eruption”? To what is he referring? link
- What does POLICE stand for? (abbr) link
- Is it good for your body to run a marathon? link
- Is music essential to life? link
- Is there really such a thing as a victimless crime? link
- How should “economics” be considered and delineated. Is it truly “a discipline” or something else[?] link
- Was the Big Bang loud? link
- How many James Bond movies have been made? link
- Are we living in a simulated reality? link
- Training for marathons is bad for you? link
As usual, my previous sets of awarded answers can be seen here and here and here.
