Why can WikiAnswers not answer?

Answer 1

Some questions are answered almost immediately. Some questions are never answered, or turn out to be unanswerable.

WikiAnswers is a "question and answer co-op." Everything -- the questions and the answers -- is contributed by visitors just like you.

Questions remain unanswered until someone volunteers an answer. Fortunately, there are a number of intelligent people who are remarkably generous with their time.

Advice

• If you want fast answers or a lot of information at once, you should probably try a search engine like www.Google.com or www.dogpile.com
• If you want word definitions, you should try an online dictionary (or a real one)
• If you want to chat, you should try an online chat room or a social networking website like www.myspace.com or www.facebook.com
• Make sure that you include enough precise informationfor your question to be answered. For example, avoid questions like 'What was life like in California in those days?' Instead, ask something like 'Did the Spaniards have much influence on everyday life in California when it was part of the Spanish Empire?'
• Don't expect WikiAnswers to do your homework for you - we will be happy to help you figure out how to do the work, but we are not specifically a homework website.
• Try not to ask questions that require a gigantic answer. It's not reasonable to expect someone to whip out 100 pages of single spaced text for you, so questions like "Tell me everything about Ecology", aren't likely to get answered. Narrow it down a little.
• Check out the Related Questions below for more helpful hints and tips!

Wiki Answers is a contributor driven website. That means that ordinary people on line take the time to answer questions if they know the answer. Perhaps the person that knows the answer to your question isn't online yet.
Some people do not know the answer to the question. Also, some people submit silly questions that people do not want to answer. Even if I do not know the answer I research the questions and anwer the question.

Answer:

To be interesting enough fo a person to answer a quetsion it must be :

• In the format of a question
• Clear - what do you want to know
• In reasonably good English so there are no mystery words
• Not inane or nonsense
• Interesting
• Not obviously homework

Answer 2

There are just too many questions on WikiAnswers for every one to be answered. We try our best to get to every question, but sometimes there are just too many! WikiAnswers is now trying to recruit users to sift through the old question archives and try to answer some questions that have been unnoticed.

Answer 3

unfortunately, all of the questions in the whole world cannot be answered. you can answer them yourself, if you know what the answer is to them, if you become a member of wikianswers. Many questions are also repeats of older answered questions, if you find these you should request a question merge.

Answer 4

WikiAnswers does not have the capability to generate answers. A contributor must write an answer for a question to be answered. Some questions are either unanswerable (for example: Why does democracy smell like walnuts?), some are too broad (for example: What is the history of Europe?) and others may be too esoteric or complex for someone to answer.

Answer 5

You MUST remember - this is not a 'live' site (like a chatroom)... it is a Forum. Your question(s) may not have been seen by someone who could answer you yet - you simply need to be patient.

*ALSO*

Look at the other questions in the category that your question is in: it may have been asked in a different way and received an answer.

Answer 6

There are many reasons. Did you spell your question correctly? Does it really make any sense? There only a few people who are answering questions and many questions to answer. Help by answering the ones you know. And give a correct category so the question goes to someone who is good at answering your type of questions and lastly give it time. You may not get an answer right this very minute!!

Answer 7

Why some questions don't get answers:

• You didn't wait long enough - this isn't Google where you get an instant result. You have to wait for someone to come along who knows the answer
• Your question was too vague - some questions are just too vague for anybody to answer, like "When did he die?" or "What school did she go to?"
• Your question was too broad - some questions would take an entire textbook to answer, like "What are all the animals on the earth?" or "What are the names of all the stars?"
• Your question was already answered - some people don't pay attention to the software when it asks "Is this your question?" and ask the same question over and over and over. People aren't going to keep answering the same thing - merge your question with the one that is already answered
• Your question is just plain silly - questions like "How many farts fit in a cucumber?" are just dumb and nobody's going to answer them
• Your question is obviously copied from your homework or test - we get a lot of people trying to cheat on their homework here, and most people just don't want to help people cheat.