Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at
4:39 pm
I’ve been on YA since February 2008, answered over 2400 questions, have a 16% Best Answer percentage, and that plus the residual points from other sources pushed me into Level 6 this weekend. I’ve only asked about 35 questions and almost always awarded a Best Answer, so they didn’t cost me much. On average, I’m only answering about 4 questions a day, but in reality I do it in spurts. For example, last week I answered over 200 questions. But the point is, I’m not consumed by YA. I give serious answers to serious questions about 2/3’s of the time, and stupid/goofy/funny/insouciant answers to the stupid/goofy/funny/insouciant questions. Lately I’ve taken to calling out trolls — at least, the boring ones — and reporting spam and inappropriate content…just taking a stand. And I haven’t gamed the system with a bunch of alternate Avatars that award my primary Avatar "Best Answer."
But at this rate it will take another two years to get to Level 7….and I don’t think I’m going to make it. Now if there was a substantive award for that, it would be one thing…but there isn’t. And is it just being here for a while, or has the quality of questions gone down, while the lack of civility has gone up? More and more I’m leafing through 3, 4, 5 pages before I find a question that is interesting enough to answer; bypassing all the / Jonas Brothers Hot? / Am I Pregnant? / Obama Sucks? / Obama Rules? / Cats or Dogs? / Am I Pretty? / Masturbation? / Liberals = Idiots? / Conservatives = Morons? / Jesus Saves? / Jesus is a myth? / Am I gay? / Do my homework? / questions.
So how did you get to Level 7? Did you do it honestly? Some of you made it there in an astonishingly short period, with a suspiciously high percentage of Best Answers; did you game the system? Did you just answer question after pointless question with a quick "thanks for the 2 points!" answer, or did you seriously answer serious questions? Did you reach a Level 6 ennui like I have? Or do you still have a lot of enthusiasm for YA as a source of social interaction and education, a way to waste time, or just as a "coffe-break" type diversion? What motivated you to stay on here long enough to get to Level 7?
These are interesting responses, but none of you have addressed my subsidiary question, and actually my main reason for asking: Motivation! I mean, like Ed, man, you’ve answered 31,000 questions; that’s like 80 a day. Just assuming it takes a minute or two to read and compose and type an answer, you must be on here like 3 or 4 hours a day…what gives with that? Even those of you who max our your voting — good tip, by the way — and are reading the question (and some are long!) and scolling through the answers (sometimes there’s a lot!) and going back to the one you like…that’s got to take at least a minute or so…a good 1 1/2 hours a day of your time. What’s driving you to do that?
And I’m not trying to be sarcastic or ridicule you…I’m genuinely curious. I treat this, like I said, as a "coffee break" diversion (esp. since I don’t drink coffee) and I’m getting bored with it — hard to see sticking around for another 15,000 points unless something unexpected motivates me.