Does anyone else find that answering 'anonymous' questions is a waste of time?

Meyermv - you touch on an issue that has become near and dear to my heart. Perhaps, tooooo near and not-so-dear! ;-) I don't think that answering Anon's Q's should be a waste of time, which prompts me to address your last questions first.

The initially-stated reason behind allowing questioners to remain anonymous was that people would ask questions that they'd otherwise be reluctant to put their names to. But, the more-obvious Mahalo logic behind anonymous questions is that it brings a great deal of traffic to the site. A lot of people who stumble upon Mahalo will give it a shot if they don't need to register first.

Ideally, they get a good answer, see that it is a good place, register and become a good member of the Mahalo community. But, Mahalo doesn't necessarily need people to register. The business model is based upon traffic to the site.So, if people do not want to register, but feel comfortable coming here and asking anonymous questions anyway, then so be it.

And, actually, Mahalo gets its AdSense revenue from non-registered internet-surfers, rather than registered askers/answerers. But, to continue increasing its revenue, Mahalo needs to increase its traffic, which requires an increase in askers AND people to answer the Q's.So, Mahalo needs to keep it in YOUR interest to ANSWER Anon's Q's, too. The possibility of revenue sharing helps with that, communicating with the answering community and keeping answerers involved is another key part of that.

Prior to the single-stage voting systerm that was put into place a couple of months ago, answers that we gave to Anon's many questions may have gone un-commented on or un-voted upon, but they most definitely did NOT get actively dissed (disrespected) by Mahalo.To the contrary, they were put out for a round of voting - and there was a small corps of Mahaloans who sought them out and helped select best answers. They remained open until someone voted. With the new voting system, all of those old, unvoted-upon questions/answers were closed out.

The message on them - both on Mahalo's site and in the Google search results - was that there was "no best answer". Even if there was one or more B.A. -worthy answers. Even though it was simply because the voting corps had inadvertently missed it.(Certainly no volunteer here has been able to vote on every Q/A since the volume started to increase exponentially!) Even though the Q/A's were good enough to earn revenue for Mahalo.

And, UNTIL TODAY*, the single-stage voting had been set up to automatically declare "No Best Answer" if no answer had a positive "helpful" voting score when the 4 day window (starting when the first answer was received) to vote closed. Again, though several of us did our best to try to ensure that no questions with deserving answers were auto-NBA'ed, MANY - probably including some of yours, Meyermv - did get dissed like that.(During the most-frustrating Mahalo week in which you asked THIS question, we couldn't even LOCATE questions that were about to get auto-NBA'ed!) However, with the weekly deploy of new code/fixes/etc that Mahalo puts into place Thursday night/Friday mornings, it appears that your answers to Anon's questions (and all Q's, for that matter) WILL NOT GET AUTO-NBA'ED. They will remain "Open until a helpful answer is received"!

Though the wording needs a little work (;-)), THIS IS GREAT NEWS! I think it is STILL important that Mahalo go back and re-open the questions with your answers - and ALL auto-NBA victims - so that they can now be voted upon. I think that you, me, and many of our fellow Mahaloans would be willing to commit some time to review and vote for the BA-worthy answers that were rejected when the rules of the game were suddenly changed.(Not to mention the batch over the last couple of months, between when Mahalo said that they did not intend auto-NBA's to happen and it was finally fixed.

) To sum up, Meyermv, you have given a lot of good answers that were inadvertently dissed. Mahalo has fixed that problem going forward, and will hopefully go back and un-diss you. THERE IS MORE REASON THAN EVER BEFORE TO PROVIDE MORE GOOD ANSWERS TO ANON'S (better) QUESTIONS!

Go for it!

Meyermv - you touch on an issue that has become near and dear to my heart. Perhaps, tooooo near and not-so-dear! ;-) I don't think that answering Anon's Q's should be a waste of time, which prompts me to address your last questions first.

The initially-stated reason behind allowing questioners to remain anonymous was that people would ask questions that they'd otherwise be reluctant to put their names to. But, the more-obvious Mahalo logic behind anonymous questions is that it brings a great deal of traffic to the site. A lot of people who stumble upon Mahalo will give it a shot if they don't need to register first.

Ideally, they get a good answer, see that it is a good place, register and become a good member of the Mahalo community. But, Mahalo doesn't necessarily need people to register. The business model is based upon traffic to the site.So, if people do not want to register, but feel comfortable coming here and asking anonymous questions anyway, then so be it.

And, actually, Mahalo gets its AdSense revenue from non-registered internet-surfers, rather than registered askers/answerers. But, to continue increasing its revenue, Mahalo needs to increase its traffic, which requires an increase in askers AND people to answer the Q's.So, Mahalo needs to keep it in YOUR interest to ANSWER Anon's Q's, too. The possibility of revenue sharing helps with that, communicating with the answering community and keeping answerers involved is another key part of that.

Prior to the single-stage voting systerm that was put into place a couple of months ago, answers that we gave to Anon's many questions may have gone un-commented on or un-voted upon, but they most definitely did NOT get actively dissed (disrespected) by Mahalo.To the contrary, they were put out for a round of voting - and there was a small corps of Mahaloans who sought them out and helped select best answers. They remained open until someone voted. With the new voting system, all of those old, unvoted-upon questions/answers were closed out.

The message on them - both on Mahalo's site and in the Google search results - was that there was "no best answer". Even if there was one or more B.A. -worthy answers. Even though it was simply because the voting corps had inadvertently missed it.(Certainly no volunteer here has been able to vote on every Q/A since the volume started to increase exponentially!) Even though the Q/A's were good enough to earn revenue for Mahalo.

And, UNTIL TODAY*, the single-stage voting had been set up to automatically declare "No Best Answer" if no answer had a positive "helpful" voting score when the 4 day window (starting when the first answer was received) to vote closed. Again, though several of us did our best to try to ensure that no questions with deserving answers were auto-NBA'ed, MANY - probably including some of yours, Meyermv - did get dissed like that.(During the most-frustrating Mahalo week in which you asked THIS question, we couldn't even LOCATE questions that were about to get auto-NBA'ed! ) However, with the weekly deploy of new code/fixes/etc that Mahalo puts into place Thursday night/Friday mornings, it appears that your answers to Anon's questions (and all Q's, for that matter) WILL NOT GET AUTO-NBA'ED.

They will remain "Open until a helpful answer is received"! Though the wording needs a little work (;-)), THIS IS GREAT NEWS! I think it is STILL important that Mahalo go back and re-open the questions with your answers - and ALL auto-NBA victims - so that they can now be voted upon.

I think that you, me, and many of our fellow Mahaloans would be willing to commit some time to review and vote for the BA-worthy answers that were rejected when the rules of the game were suddenly changed.(Not to mention the batch over the last couple of months, between when Mahalo said that they did not intend auto-NBA's to happen and it was finally fixed. ) To sum up, Meyermv, you have given a lot of good answers that were inadvertently dissed. Mahalo has fixed that problem going forward, and will hopefully go back and un-diss you.

THERE IS MORE REASON THAN EVER BEFORE TO PROVIDE MORE GOOD ANSWERS TO ANON'S (better) QUESTIONS! Go for it!

I believe there was an NBA bug going around awhile back, but that should be fixed. That may have been the problem, particularly because anonymous askers can't choose their own best answer, which makes the whole process a bit different to start with. As for the rest of the questions, there are quite a few similar questions (like all the Farmville questions a few months back) that I think are just asked by passers-by that don't bother getting an account.

That's fine, in fact I think the more spam a site gets, the more popular it's becoming. Personally, I skip over a great majority of questions asked by registered users anyway, just because I don't know enough to give them the kind of answer they deserve. I don't see how that's any different than skipping over anonymous questions that I don't know how to answer (Justin Bieber questions, Farmville questions, etc).

There are a few really interesting anonymous questions, like recently I answered mahalo.com/answers/anonymous/what-does-t... What does the name Margaret translate to in Hawaiian? And mahalo.com/answers/anonymous/i-have-two-... I have two sources of income, would it be wise to spend the least one first? And mahalo.com/answers/wind-instruments/how-... How do you play A flat and E flat on the flute?.

They're not all boring. :).

I never noticed that so I didn't think it was a waste of time to answer those anonymous questions. Thanks for asking. Now, when I look through my 'helpful answers' list, I've noticed that most anonymously asked questions are not being voted up/down or being voted NBA's (or have not been commented at all) though there are few that are voted as BA's, too.

I wish I had known this earlier but we can offer some help here by spying. And by doing that, I hope it would be the votes of other users that matter because the anonymous asker may abuse the system by not choosing best answer for the deserving best answer. There are good anonymous questions esp.

Those that don't violate the answer guidelines but the users are just ashamed of asking it openly. And I think it now depends on us if we answer or not those anonymous questions but I hope the Mahalo team would think of a way to protect answerers, too by adding an appeal button so we can appeal for our answers.

Actually yea its kinda retarted lol but ya knw some ppl r stoopid.

I guess I would have to pay attention to whether the anonymous questions I ask actually end up getting a best answer. I tend to answer the ones which seem legit, and obviously avoid the troll stuff and the misguided people (mostly the "Live chat with Justin Beiber" ones).

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.