0
What else can I help you with?
Who has the power to merge questions on WikiAnswers?
Supervisors can merge questions on WikiAnswers. You can notify Supervisors through the Community Forum, which is checked regularly. It will help if you include the URLs for the questions you think should be merged and we'll take care of it.
How do you merge answers on WikiAnswers?
Only Supervisors have the ability to merge questions. Non-supervisors who reword questions may trigger a merge that will be sent to a Community Assistant for review. If the two questions should be merged, the CA will merge them.
Can non-Supervisors merge questions on WikiAnswers?
No, they can't. They can, however, suggest a merge.(See the Related question for details.)
Are supervisors of WikiAnswers Super-poweful?
Yes, Supervisors have special powers on WikiAnswers that normal users do not have access to. Supervisor's "super-powers" include the ability to merge questions and set question alternates as the primary wording for questions. Supervisors also have the ability to block users who are making counterproductive edits to WikiAnswers.
How can you merge exactly identical questions into 1 question?
The WikiAnswers site does not allow you to have two identical questions. If there are two questions that would have an identical answer, then they should be merged. Only Supervisors have this ability.
Who are supervisors?
Supervisors are a special group of users on WikiAnswers who have special powers on the website. Supervisor powers include the ability to merge questions, set question alternates as the primary wording for questions, and the power to block users who are making counterproductive edits to the wiki. Supervisors are users who have demonstrated that they are trustworthy editors and have contributed many helpful answers to WikiAnswers in the past.
Will WikiAnswers Supervisors notice if you recommend a merge?
Usually the merge recommendation goes to Deb. Depending on the amount of requests, someone else may help her.
What should you do if WikiAnswers does not merge the similar questions that you have recommended a merge for?
If you believe that two questions should be merged, but the recommendation for one did not seem to work, contact any Supervisor or Community Assistant on WikiAnswers. They can merge questions very quickly for you if they are, indeed, similar enough.
What is the best way to merge similar questions on WikiAnswers?
Only duplicate questions asking the exact same thing (but in different words) should be merged. For instance, "What is the population of New York?" and "What is the population of New York in 2008?" are distinct questions that should not be merged together. The same goes for "What is the average height of a 12-year-old male?" and "What is the average height of a 13-year-old male?"Only supervisors can merge questions on WikiAnswers. All registered users can recommend a merge by clicking "Improve" next to the question or using the "Improve question" option in the blue Control panel and typing in the question into which you would like to merge it. Then WikiAnswers Support will merge them as appropriate shortly after that. Supervisors can merge without delay.If you are not a supervisor, follow the instructions as described in the Related question below.If you are interested in becoming a Supervisor please e-mail Supervisor @ WikiAnswers.com (no spaces).See the Related Link for help on merging.
How do you merge two equivalent questions on WikiAnswers?
That depends on whether you are a supervisor, a signed in user, or a non-signed in user. Anyone who can edit the wording of a question can trigger a merge *request,* but only supervisors can actually perform a merge. (This is because we get lots of people who don't know how to merge, or who want to merge things that are not the same.) How: if you can edit the question wording, change it to the same wording as the question you want it to be merged into. If you have the rights, this will ask you if you want to complete a merge. If you do not, this will trigger an email that will be sent, indicating that your username wants to merge these two questions together. For supervisors, there is also a link that allows you to access an area to do merges another way... that should be covered in supervisor training/mentoring.
Is WikiAnswers sorting out the superfluous questions?
Actually, the supervisors spend a great deal of time recatorizing answers. Since we see so many questions, there are a great many repeats and rewording of the same question. Supervisors read each question and merge the same questions together. It is one of the many things that supervisors do. Some questions have as many as 400 different ways to say the same thing! But we do try very hard to make getting information as easy as possible.
Why does WikiAnswers change 'I' to 'you' in the questions?
WikiAnswers changes 'I' to 'you' in the questions because WikiAnswers prefers second person over first person questions. It is part of the WikiAnswers Style Rules. It also makes the whole database a lot less hard to manage. Since we merge together questions that are asking the same thing, changing I to you automatically prevents us from having hundreds of thousands of other "I" questions that we would have to merge together.
