Web Applications

Network World's Web Applications Newsletter, 05/28/07

The Wis.dm of questions

By Mark Gibbs

If you took a random sample of Internet users what percentage of them would agree to the statement “Is drug abuse ruining society?” An answer (or even the answer) is 24% “yes” and 76% “no.”

How about the really challenging question “Would you buy a castle without a moat?” (Answers – yes: 46%; no: 54%). These questions and thousands more are what Wis.dm is all about (their tag line is “Question everything”).

Wis.dom is a curious experiment that is definitely part of the social networking zeitgeist. Registered users (registration is free) pose yes/no questions and other registered users answer them and add to the tally. You can respond to questions without being registered although your votes don’t count. That’s pretty much it.

When you create a question (optionally with tags) you are provided with a code fragment that you can use to pose the question on Web sites or blogs. For example, I posted the code for a question I created (“At your house does ‘... morning in the bowl of night fling the stone that puts the stars to flight’?”) on Gibbsblog.

As a registered user you can add comments to a question and, post questions to your Facebook, Digg!, and del.icio.us accounts, send the question to friends via e-mail, get e-mail alerts when people comment on your questions, and there is supposed to be a Wis.dm button you can add to your browser so you can post a question about what you looking at but I couldn’t find it.

As a registered user, Wis.dm will also offer you questions to answer based on the kinds of questions you have answered previously.

While the results of Wis.dm questions are generally neither statistically valid (self-selection and a small audience) nor usually particularly profound there is value in the pop culture insights that can be gained in much the same way that pop culture insights can be gauged from observing MySpace or Facebook. A more interesting application of this service might be internally in organizations to allow staff to draw on each other’s knowledge and expertise.

Oh, at the time of writing, my question had gained 11 answers in about one hour with a disappointing “no” vote of 73% … Omar would be disappointed.

As always, your thoughts, comments, and even questions are welcome. Drop me a note.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, and columnist and now blogger: Check out Gibbsblog.

Gibbs not only pens (well, keyboards) this newsletter he also writes the weekly Backspin and Gearhead columns in Network World. We’ll spare you the rest of the bio but if you want to know more, go here.

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