There are a number of Q&A sites on the web. I’ve been a member of a community which didn’t get it right, and I switched to this one. First off, several things distinguish it and some are basically derivative of others.
1) This site seems to attract a far more intelligent group of people than on other sites. If you find something rather vapid in popular culture, and you do a google search on it, you might well find links to Yahoo Answers, Askville or other Q&A sites. For example…“Who’s your favorite Jonas Brother”?
2) There is a second reason you’re not likely to see a question about who’s your favorite Jonas Brother…not only is the “clientelle” beyond asking questions like that, but the moderation keeps chatty, poll like questions off the site. It also keeps spammers at bay. You are unlikely to find a question that is not seriously posed and well written on Fluther. I have yet to see another Q&A site which can make that claim. It is perhpas BECAUSE of this quality control that the smarter people stick around and the people who are more concerned with things of very little importance move on rather quickly after being modded enough times.
3) Trolls, spam and personal attacks are aggressively dealth with here on Fluther. You may see someone pushing an agenda, but they won’t last long, you will probably never or almost never see someone trying to get you to come over to their site to sell you something (and if you do it will be gone within minutes), and if someone attacks you, calls you names or what not, their comment WILL be removed.
4) There are no false incentives…by giving lurve instead of paying people to ask questions or answer them, or given them some sort of points system which may have some value (or even just bragging rights), it incentivises gaming. Here on Fluther, there is no requirement to rate anyone’s answer in order to give them more stars…lurve is given freely, if you want to give it. And no one person can account for more than 100 points of your lurve, so there’s no way to game the system.
I’ve been to another site, I’ve seen the difference. Instead of a community where people genuinely want to hear what others have to say, where there may be a number of voices you respect and listen to, you have this sort of cliquish community, where people start to focus on irrelevant and inconsequential, superficial aspects of being part of this club, and people start to worry about who’s on the leader board and who cheated, and you have people who come just to cause trouble, no one tells them they can’t, and it just doesn’t lend itself to being a place where you can share and learn. I dare say I have learned more about life in general with less effort through Fluther than via any other means in my life.
I’d say, if you’re intellectual and want to have that side of your brain stimulated, this is the best possible place to make that happen.
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Composing members:
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