Yahoo Answers: The Nature of Truth

So this last week I've spent a significant amount of time on Yahoo's Answers. Unlike my experience with Wikipedia, where I must carefully document all source material and more importantly, I must be diligent about what I share or edit, as I will quickly hear from a ton of people if my information is ambiguous. But Yahoo and Wiki are fundamentally different. According to a SLATE magazine article By Jacob Leibenluft entitled "A Librarian's Worst Nightmare: Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong." He points out the startling fact that Yahoo Answers "...now draws 120 million users worldwide, compiled from 400 million answers, and is the second-most-visited education/reference site on the Internet after Wikipedia." But in that sentence, the distinction is lost, because though he calls it a eduction/reference site, it's missing a caveat on the true nature of what kind of answers you're getting. And certainly, "Answers" is a misnomer. On Yahoo Answers, I can still interact with millions of users sharing information, but it's more about giving subjective advice and finding out how my opinions match up to others than about really caring about objectivity and a standardized, agreed upon version of the truth.

I have to admit, my interest in the site skyrocketed when I realized that there is a point system. Because naturally, whenever there is an opportunity to compete, even for something as lame as points, I get a little competitive.

But here's what I noticed about the people who use Yahoo Answers:

1. Most users seem to be kids under the age of 16
2. Most of the kids using Yahoo Answers do so to specifically answer homework questions
like the following:

"What Kind of World does a Protagonist live in?"

and:

"What ideas does Mark Twain satirize in Huck Finn?"

or:

"Find the inverse of Y=3X/2?"

And the funny thing about this is that people actually answer these obvious homework questions. What an interesting new form of plagiarism! As the aforementioned article states, "For educators fretting that the Internet is creating a generation of "intellectual sluggards," the problem isn't just that Yahoo!'s site helps ninth-graders cheat on their homework. It's that a lot of the time, it doesn't help them cheat all that well." I have to agree, and this aspect is what I found to be the most disturbing thing about Yahoo Answers.

So I find myself asking - are teachers aware that this is happening? What steps do they take to make sure their kids are using their brains instead of strangers to problem solve? And how is asking for advice from strangers any different from getting help from parents - or does that even matter?

I don't know how teachers are dealing with this - but I'd be curious to hear any thoughts...