Should Anonymously posted questions be answerable by the very people who post them?

Yes and I think they should answer every anonymous question they ask. Before anonymous questions if we wanted to get questions in relation to our pages or own interests we had to use the Mahalo Twitter Twittersearch tool. We would import questions asked by real people on Twitter here into Mahalo Answers ... and get this ... we were politely REQUIRED to answer all that we imported.

We were asked to at the very least have the intention of answering EVERY question we imported from Twitter. The problem with this was that sometimes the questions we wanted to have asked and then answer were just not out there on Twitter so we had to either ask them ourselves (and not be able to answer) or just keep searching Twitter until we found the question(s) we were looking for. This, I believe, is one of the reasons we have anonymous questions.. so we can ask questions directly related to our managed pages and then hopefully answer them and finally put them on the managed page with the correct answer for all to see and draw from.So now we can ask ANY question we want in relation to any subject we want and I would love it if the same guidelines that applied to importing questions from Twitter applied to asking anonymous questions.. ask them and then answer them.. correctly and thoroughly.

To me there is no ethical issue with this at all. ..if someone wants to ask an anonymous question they should be everything short of absolutely required to answer that very question. I can see no reason what so ever to ask any question anonymously other than to promote a managed Mahalo page and if a page manager wishes to use Mahalo Answers to promote their page(s) then they should clean up the mess of anonymous questions they asked in doing so by answering the questions asked.

Ask ... answer... done.. page promoted. Check that off the list.. It is the courteous and ethical thing to do.

Yes. Are people doing this? Maybe.Is this acceptable?

No. Should this be doable? No, but the only way I can think of to prevent it would require Mahalo to breach the anonymity of anon questions, which sort of defeats their purpose.

However, keep in mind the following: - If a question is lame, members may vote it down, disappearing it. - Anon question Best Answer is only selected by community votes, so If someone provides a lame answer to an anon question, it may well be voted No Best Answer. - The benefits of getting BA on an anon question are limited (4 points for answering immediately, plus 10 points and M$0.25 *if* you get vote BA), so this is a rather pathetic way of getting anywhere.

I doubt anyone would be interested in gathering the thousands of points needed to get to brown and black belt this way. Plus, to get upper belts a member would have to be active and well-thought-of in other aspects of Mahalo, which probably people who would do this would have a hard time with.

I don't like anonymous questions and think that they should be stopped. However, with regard to your question, it seems that this would be one of the minor positive points. It allows people to play a sort of trivia game, asking questions that they know the answer to, and seeing if anyone else can figure it out.As far as points or money goes, it's all too trivial to matter.

Perhaps when Mahalo was starting out it was OK to import and answer your own questions, and maybe there is a legitimate need for some users who manage pages to ask the occassional question....however Mahalo pays out 25cents every time someone games the system either alone or with a few friends, by asking lame questions and giving lame answers and having lame users vote on them....you see if we did in fact vote NBA when we should, instead of voting for every single dumb idiot one line answer Mahalo would save money and the quality of answers would improve. How about we do that eh? How about the users who vote for 50 answers etc every day READ all the answers instead of voting for the first one, how about we stick to NBA when its suppose to have a source and it doesn't.

Maybe, just maybe, it will help Mahalo, and us, and the quality of anonymous questions and answers - if they know we won't vote a bad answer and give away 25 cents maybe they'll stop doing it! I can almost see the groups of gamers sitting at the internet cafe asking and answering and laughing and generally sucking out the goodness from Mahalo one dumb question at a time..... Time for a change, time to stop being allowed to answer your own asked question!

You can get more points I guess, and it would only take a couple dollar investment to pull it off in a reasonable amount of time. BUt then what would you get? A higher belt?

It won't get you respect because you're answering your own questions, so not many people are going to know who you are. And if they're lame questions with lame answers, you won't get respect. And if you have like, 100% best answer rating, but only $2.00 worth of tips... (because you spent all your money on questions) And finally, it really would be a lot of work for little gain.

Coming up with respectable questions isn't that easy. It would take several hundred for you to get to a decent belt. Should they allow you to answer your own anonymous questions?

I would say no. But how could you regulate that? I've never asked a question before, anonymous or otherwise.

I guess you have to .

Good question. This to me is definitely not acceptable and I agree that it would be cheating. Trying to get points and dollars the quick and easy way.To us, we see anonymous but maybe the Mahalo team can see behind the scene that the same person is in fact posting and answering?

I wonder how they could prevent this from happening? P.S.I remember 8-10 years ago when people listed stuff on Ebay and got their friends to bid to help raise the price.It didn't take long for Ebay to put strict measures in place. So maybe Mahalo is working on this issue.

Christine101.

Regardless, People will always do things like this. Perhaps it makes them feel better and validates 'talking to yourself'.

No I don't think it should be...if that were the case I could post a ton of anonymous questions and then answer them immediately for the points and get best answer as well and any tips that people might of left! In my opinion that is a way of hacking the system.... Good question though!

Oooo - This is a good one! Never even thought of that angle. Personally, I take pride in moving up through the Mahalo ranks by providing top-quality writing, no matter what the scenario.

Guess I'm just not clever enough to come up with a ploy like that. Pity, but not surprising. Isn't that one element of human nature?

Expend brain power and energy in the aberrant as opposed to investing the same energy in excellence?

Doesn't seem ethical to me, so no. Also sounds like a way to game the system. *shrug.

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.