Comments and Conversations

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A lot of clarifying goes on in Google Answers, both before and after a researcher gets hold of your question. The system is devised to encourage conversation and cooperation between user and researcher. It’s not Jeopardy. Flexibility is built into the system to increase the chance of satisfaction on both sides. Because of the conversational nature of the Google Answers system, combined with the eagerness to share knowledge shown by Google researchers and other users browsing posted questions, you can often find the information you want (or some of it) without getting a formal answer to your posted question.

Anybody can add a comment to a posted question, and the authors of added comments are not identified as researchers or regular users. The result is an information milieu in which everyone is sharing what they know. The trick is to distinguish between good information and bad information — an issue that can be universally applied to the Internet. Many Google Answer comments, and nearly all official answers, are documented with links to research sites, which helps establish their authenticity.

Figure 7-8 shows an open question followed by a comment. The illustration cannot be large enough to reveal that, in fact, four comments were posted to the question, which still doesn’t have an official answer. The question is a historical one and difficult to answer definitively, preventing any researcher from finding a quick, definitive answer and claiming the payment. Still, the comments furnish much useful, fascinating information, plus links for questioners to explore on their own.

Figure 7-8: Conversations are encouraged through posted comments, which sometimes answer the question before a researcher does.

Tip 

It might sometimes happen that your question gets essentially answered by comments, without an official researcher’s answer. This development is somewhat rare in the case of specific, data-oriented questions, which researchers jump on with dizzying speed. But it’s not so uncommon when a question requires deep research or has multiple answers. (Figure 7-8 illustrates such a situation with the Franz Liszt historical question.)

If you’re satisfied with the posted comments your question has attracted and no longer need an official answer, feel free to close the question by following these steps:

1. Click the My Account link on any Google Answers page.

2. Click the link to your question.

3. You might have more than one posted question. Use the drop-down menu to narrow your list, if necessary, by choosing Questions Awaiting Answers.

4. On your questions’ page, click the Close Question button (see Figure 7-2).

5. The page reloads with a confirmation notice at the top, asking whether you are sure that you want to close the question.

6. Click the Yes, Close Question button.

7. After closing a question, that question appears on your Google Answers account page, with CLOSED in the Status column (see Figure 7-9).

   
   Figure 7-9: Closed questions still appear on the account page.

   Remember 

   All the back-and-forth discussion following a posted question can make Google Answers seem almost like a message board. Almost. The conversations are not threaded as a message board is, meaning you can’t see at a glance who is responding to whom in Google Answers. However, the similarity to message boards brings up an interesting point: If you can get good information from informal comments in Google Answers, maybe you can likewise get questions answered on message boards elsewhere. That, in fact, is partly what Usenet newsgroups are all about, and Google provides the preeminent Web interface to Usenet newsgroups. Chapter 4 dives into Google Groups in excruciating detail. The point here is that, in general, informal knowledge sharing on the Internet can be as good as paid expertise, and there are many venues in which to get it.

Improving your own research

Although Google Answers is used by people who — due to lack of time, expertise, or interest — don’t want to perform their own research, the service provides a sort of tutorial on research as a side benefit. Even if you never post a question, just reading the questions, comments, and answers of others can furnish great researching ideas. The researchers tend to use Google as a starting point (hardly a surprise), and they often divulge their search strings, complete with operators, at the bottom of the answer. A bit of study, especially directed toward some of the long, detailed answers, can improve anyone’s search skills.

The great values of Google Answers are these:

• Speed: Google staffs the Answers section with hundreds of researchers, each waiting to pounce on a question and claim its payment. Most questions, unless they are hopelessly obscure, start drawing information within hours — sometimes minutes.

• Accuracy: Google Answers pops into my mind when I have an extremely detailed question. Surfing the Answers directory, you can see that such question receive hard work and good results from researchers, who seem to enjoy sinking their teeth into a sharply defined information challenge.

Newsgroups can also be fast and accurate, but they yield a more slapdash experience, replete with conversational sideshows and a generally impatient and grumpy attitude. Google Answers is a cleaned-up, more polite, and far more literate arena for extracting information than Usenet newsgroups. You get what you pay for, I suppose, with the bonus that sometimes Google Answers does its best work for nothing more than the 50-cent listing fee.

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