Doug Vanderweide (one of the Yahoo! Answers regulars I have a deep-rooted admiration for, due to their eloquence and the fact that they know what they’re talking about) made a general reply to one of my earlier posts.

It’s kind of refreshing being a n00b again, first of all. :)

Second, though… my biggest irk with Answers! (and I’m still there, just not as obsessive compulsive as I was for the first couple of weeks) is a display of the ever-decreasing validity of what was once a resource for academics… a source of information where you could find either a solution to your problem, or find the right track by means of two-sided discussions.

These days, however, with a plethora of information being added, edited and deleted all over the place, and bias is more the rule than the exception, with people who don’t know a web page from a Word document, ignorance and strife are becoming some of the main driving forces, ranking right there amongst the other forces that “power” the web, namely spam and pyramid schemes.

True, valid information is getting sparser and sparser, and many a search on whatever topic is returning the same answer over and over, identical to the letter and obviously (and sometimes a lot less obvious) copied from a book or other copyrighted document, without as much as a hint of a credit.

Answers! is no exception, with one difference. And it’s a huge difference, in my humble opinion.

On Answers!, bad behavior is visibly rewarded. Good behavior is ignored or punished. As my profile states: I hate spam. So I diligently report it wherever I see it. Do I know if I’m a trusted reporter? No - which may be a good thing, but on the other hand, if I see a post I reported as spam still sitting there a day later, I realize my efforts compare to carrying water to the sea using a frickin’ teaspoon - and the sea clearly rejects my minor, futile effort.

I’ve learned to ignore everything that includes the MySpace crowd, because they really don’t want a solution… and if all they get is an actual answer they might be able to use later on, they ignore it altogether.

It’s not that I mind the cheating and gaming by itself as much… what bothers me is that people buy into it, and find themselves at the mercy of someone who doesn’t give a crap about anything but gaining points and a false sense of accomplishment, leaving those who do answer with the right intentions (to actually help people) in the cold. I mean… I can’t be the only one who checks back on questions to see if information was added so the original answer can be expanded when needed, right? And reporting or notifying the owners of the site results in either a blank, or a comment on the forum being deleted…

As Doug states: the Answers! system is built with the expectation that the chickens should also be the watchdog, but they shouldn’t bite or even bark.

By nature, I’m a barker. It’s tough to let go of something that’s such an integral part of my being.