Winning the first-ever AnswerThon is not to be taken lightly, as evidenced by the acceptance speeches of some of the champions. Here’s what some of the winners experienced first-hand as well as some tips for future participants… Seems like family members were key in providing support for the winners!
1st Place: Aggie80
I’m thoroughly stunned! I figured that if someone did what I did without the family challenges that they could have done twice that many easily enough. I will definitely share my reward with the family! My daughters cheered me on and even provided some help. “Hey, Dad! Someone just asked a question about karate and losing weight!”
The tabbing ability of Firefox was a big help. I actually lined up a number of questions that I answered on Friday night in tabs. When Midnight hit, I hit the submit button on all the tabs. There was a similar thing going on Saturday morning. I would go to the unanswered questions page and open a new tab for each question I thought I could answer. Then I went through and answered them, then went back through and hit the submit buttons.
By the time Sunday evening came around, I had drained the pockets of questions that I could easily answer. I would definitely say that the last 100 were the toughest, both to find and to answer.
I’m pleased to have reached this pinnacle! I will retire from the individual competition, but look forward to possible team events.
2nd Place: Steven Keyman
I’d like to thank everyone at WikiAnswers for their encouragement. Day one I had to go to work, and got off to a late start but knocked off questions at a good pace. Day two I had connection problems. (cable company) For the better part of 5 hours I was without a computer, or a television. Bad timing. During that time I answered 101 question that my son had asked like… why does the television keep going off? If you count those questions answered, I still don’t catch Aggie80. I almost gave up at that point but figured I put in too much work the day before.
Baseball memorabilia is my strength, and I pretty much stuck to that category. When replying to a question, I try to be as descriptive as possible so people understand the reason behind my answer. The most common question asked by people searching for information on baseball memorabilia is; “What is the value of my autographed baseball?” When putting a value on a collectible, there are too many factors involved to simply answer this question with a price.
The differences in, Condition, The item Signed, the type of Authenticity, and even the venue that is chosen to sell the item will all effect the value. Variation of any, or all of these factors could mean the differences in getting $40. or $400. for the same item.
The greatest part of memorabilia is the history of the item. Regardless of value if a piece of memorabilia has a story behind it, it has my attention. I myself enjoy collecting, and love to help people with their questions. It’s kind of an extension to my hobby, and in helping people out I also learn in the process. If anyone ever needs help with anything, feel free to contact me.
3rd Place: Zanbabe
I’d like to thank the academy… but especially my brother, who helped me keep answering when I was burned out on three hours of sleep by making me food and even typing while I dictated for some of the answers. I’d also like to thank the people who posted the insane questions that made it all worthwhile.
Fun Tidbit: Here are examples of the questions I found while browsing that made it interesting and that kept me awake and still trying:
Honorable Mentions:
It feels great to win this award and to be honest I wasn’t sure I was going to win anything being I had all three kids jumping on my lap the whole answering process. I love being recognized for what I was trying to do and am totally stoked!
I am so shocked and pleased to have placed in the AnswerThon! I entered without expecting to place at all. I just didn’t expect to do all that well, but I thought it was a wonderful way to get a lot of unanswered questions answered, and wanted to help out. I have so far concentrated on editing and cleaning out my categories and not on answering. So I had to quickly work up a strategy to maneuver between sites in researching and answering the questions.
I babysit my 5 month old grandbaby, and both days were fussy teething days with him, so a lot of my research and answers were done with him in my lap, I discovered that I really enjoy answering questions, and I learned so much while I was going it.
I’m so excited to be a part of WikiAnswers! I absolutely will be in on the next AnswerThon, and already am planning to get a babysitter, so that I can concentrate better and work faster and harder. I’m determined to place even higher next time! I’m so surprised I just can’t get the grin off my face!
Clay:
It was a fun experience seeing just how many questions I could answer in 24 hours. I am amazed at the 552 answers that Aggie80 provided. Congratulations to him on winning, and the others who did put forth a great effort. I do not know exactly how many I answered but I know I had answered all I could when it was over. I did my best to provide correct answers so I am satisfied with my effort. It was fun and even though my back hurts, hopefully some people were helped. My wife is sort of glad it is over as now she can get me out of the house.
I am honored to receive a runner-up prize t-shirt. I collect t-shirts, and this will join the other shirts I have been awarded on Question and Answers sites. The contest was great fun. I love answering questions, and WikiAnswers is one of the best sites to answer them on the internet. I am looking forward to the next contest.
It was a surprise to see how close I was to winning the third prize. A few more answers, and I would have made it into the money. I probably could have answered more, but I always like to do some research on the internet, in order to give a more complete answer, and to guide the users directly to sources where they can get in-depth information, so that takes a little longer. I have a lot of disposable time, and I spend most of every day answering questions online. It is my firm belief that this kind of site is becoming a more and more important resource. People want a quick answer and don’t have the time or know-how to navigate the increasingly advertisement dominated search engines.
The AnswerThon turned out to be very fun. The first morning I logged in to my Topic and found out that someone had answered all the latest Questions. So, I did some searching and found Geography to be a wide open field. I even searched the old Questions and found some that were easy to answer. I don’t usually check the old ones. If the weather had cooperated with a little rain or sleet, then I might have won it.
This is pretty cool winning this. I’d like to take 1st next time!
‘Congratulations’ to the winner and runners-up. Good work! AnswerThon was exciting, an experience and also helped answer a myriad of questions that have been lagging. Great idea! I am proud to accept my T-shirt as a runner-up and have plans to put this one on my dog Bichon Frise ‘Tootsie’ and I’m sure the word will get out at the doggie park! Can dogs join WA? They could clean up the ‘pet topic!’
“It was an exciting 48 hour challenge”: it was new, it was interesting and it was challenging. AnswerThon was a good way to motivate people on the site and the entire time during the challenge was aggressive. All the participants did a great job and was a new experience for all of us. Its always been a great pleasure to be on WikiAnswers and I’ll continue to contribute to this great community.
Congrats to Jeffery101 and JayKay as well! Wear those WikiAnswers t-shirts with pride.
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