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I will be offering bounties continuously on 3 questions at a time until the end of the year. I have points to burn and would rather see them answered :) Currently we have 55 days (depending on timezone) left, so that's 1 less needed every 2.5 days.

So goals:

Currently - 20 unanswered questions.

Can we get to:

  • Nov 15 - 16 left (actual - 19 left)
  • Nov 28 - 12 left (actual - 19 left)
  • Dec 3 (actual - 15 left)
  • Dec 9 - 8 left (actual - 15 left)
  • Dec 10 (actual - 13 left)
  • Dec 12 (actual - 10 left)
  • Dec 20 - 4 left
  • Dec 31 - 0 left!.

Obviously new ones are coming in all the time, so anyone who gets a chance, it'd be great to knock off some of the old ones, or pass them to a friend who might know about say, Georgia, or Japan, where we have a couple of them.

And if you want to add some bounties as well, all the better for it.

I'll only be offering bounties on unanswered questions. If an answer is average, I'll let the bounty ride for the full week, or until I see a great answer. But if there's a great answer, I'll bounty it and start a new one immediately.

2 Answers 2

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I think this is a great idea - a simple initiative that can help encourage some interest is never going to be a bad thing. It has inspired me to have a wee trawl for information to see if I can provide answers - and I have learned a bit about some regions I wouldn't otherwise have seen.

And as Mark said - it's nice to have a goal.

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Is this really necessary? According to this page, 99% of the questions have been answered, which is pretty good! And if there is no answer, there is a reason for it. Cranky or too specialised question, etc.

If you want to do some window dressing it could be more useful to boost the answer ratio. It is only 2.1 and could be better according to their standards ... It is good to have more than one answer. This gives a broader picture and allows to better judge the relevance and the quality of them. Even in travel-related matters, the absolute truth does not exist. It is always nice to have a second, third, ..., opinion. Personally I am not very confident when I receive only one answer in a forum, or when there is only one review of an hotel/restautant/bar/... The more opinions you have the better it is. Nevertheless, I agree that for some very specialised questions it is difficult to have more than one answer.

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  • 3
    The answer ratio is a mostly meaningless statistic -- a high answer ratio is not correlated in any way to answer quality.
    – mindcorrosive
    Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 23:40
  • 2
    In addition, the answer ratio for travel questions is always going to be lower than say, programming questions. There's multiple algorithms that people could post, for say, sorting a list (simple example), whereas generally the questions that come up on travel (how do I get a visa to Russia, or whatever) won't get that many different ways. Not always, and some do have a LOT of answers (in fact two non wiki questions have 17 answers).
    – Mark Mayo Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2012 at 2:24
  • 5
    Yes if there's no answer, there's a reason for it - sometimes we haven't looked at them all, or it's new, or it's something that the experienced travellers know how to find out, but can't be bothered because it's a dull ferry question or something. I've learned a lot looking up some obscure ones in the past that I knew nothing about, and I'm fairly sure I could answer a few of those unanswered ones, given enough time to research. Alas for the next week I'm still travelling on holiday :D
    – Mark Mayo Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2012 at 2:26
  • And if you look at [this link of all the sites], many of them actually have 100%. It is possible, and it's nice to have a goal.
    – Mark Mayo Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2012 at 2:27
  • @Mark mayo: I am not against having goals. On the contrary. I just anted to suggest an alternative
    – user3470
    Commented Nov 9, 2012 at 17:31
  • I have updated my suggestion.
    – user3470
    Commented Nov 9, 2012 at 20:48
  • Nobody seems to agree or disagree. Generalised indifference about this ... ?
    – user3470
    Commented Nov 12, 2012 at 17:36
  • TBH, 100% answer ratio is a bad goal. High answer ratio: yes. No unasnwered quesion = there have not been the good questions yet.
    – yo'
    Commented Nov 26, 2012 at 21:54
  • That's an interesting point!
    – user3470
    Commented Nov 26, 2012 at 22:02

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