172. Make your knowledge visible
Yahoo! Answers is getting really popular, even addictive. (http://answers.yahoo.com)
(I confess to being an addict myself!).
It's a global message board where you can post questions and also provide answers to people who have questions.
It's quite inspiring actually, because there are people to whom I gave a good answer (they chose my answer as the best) and I see those same people providing good answers to yet other people. It's like a virtuous cycle: the more you help people, the more people are inclined to help others, and on and on it goes.
But here's the success secret: Yahoo! designed the scoring system so that you become (pleasantly) addicted to answering other people's questions.
This addiction, in turn, drives you to write thoughtful answers so that you "earn" 10 points (if your answer is not selected as the best, you only earn two points). The key, of course, is to only answer questions on topics, issues or situations that you are thoroughly knowledgeable about.
But beyond the score, there is something fundamentally more important: you get to make your knowledge visible. This is awesome because once you see what it is that you actually know, you realize one of two things:
(I confess to being an addict myself!).
It's a global message board where you can post questions and also provide answers to people who have questions.
It's quite inspiring actually, because there are people to whom I gave a good answer (they chose my answer as the best) and I see those same people providing good answers to yet other people. It's like a virtuous cycle: the more you help people, the more people are inclined to help others, and on and on it goes.
But here's the success secret: Yahoo! designed the scoring system so that you become (pleasantly) addicted to answering other people's questions.
This addiction, in turn, drives you to write thoughtful answers so that you "earn" 10 points (if your answer is not selected as the best, you only earn two points). The key, of course, is to only answer questions on topics, issues or situations that you are thoroughly knowledgeable about.
But beyond the score, there is something fundamentally more important: you get to make your knowledge visible. This is awesome because once you see what it is that you actually know, you realize one of two things:
- "Holy cow! I don't know much! Maybe I should start reading some books!"
- "O my gosh, my knowledge is useful to people! Maybe I should read more books in order to help MORE people!"
In other words, Yahoo! Answers gives you a reality check on what you actually know, and on the degree to which your knowledge is useful to people.
Your performance on Yahoo! Answers is a fair reflection of your performance in life, in your career and in business.
In conclusion, Yahoo! Answers shows clearly those who have power (knowledge) and those who do not have power. Of course, it's never too late to learn and acquire knowledge (power). But it should be done asap because we live in the knowledge society / economy, and those who don't know are economically disadvantaged and eventually will become obsolete.
posted by Super Peter at 12:22 PM
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