As you may know, one of the sister sites of HawaiiThreads.com is HawaiiAnswers.com, intended as a "Frequently Asked Questions" (or FAQ) repository for the islands.
I once assembled the USENET 'alt.culture.hawaii' FAQ (an incredible ten years ago) to try and collect the types of questions people commonly asked in the newsgroup, and some of the best answers. HawaiiAnswers.com continues in this spirit, and already has entries from "How to make a spam musubi?" to "Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?"
While there is already a mailing list where some of these questions are forwarded to a group of brainy answerfolk, I've noticed that HawaiiThreads.com sees its share of repeat questions, and more importantly, has several members who excel in providing great answers, researching if neccessary, and going above and beyond (even when the simplest answer is, "Just search for it yourself, dummy!").
So I was wondering if anyone thought it might be a good idea for some of the questions that come through HawaiiAnswers.com get posted on occasion to HawaiiThreads.com, in the correct forum but perhaps under a special username. Then y'all could give some input (knowing in advance it's for a more general audience), and people with questions could have an even greater selection and depth of answers.
To be sure, questions that are specific to a person ("I'm a mechanic and I want to live in Makiki, how much...") or specific to a time ("Where is the Bob Marley Festival next week?") wouldn't be HawaiiAnswers.com questions. And trust me, the site gets all kinds of stuff, particularly attempts to find ex wives, newspaper clippings, and "a list of all {x} in {y} that cost less than {z}." I'd be looking specifically to get help on questions that are more general, but require answers more "fuzzy" than just an encyclopedia entry or where different answers are possible.
There will also be straight "trivia" type questions, though, where Google has simply failed us ("What song was used in the commercial for...").
What do you think? Bring it on? Or is the natural flow of questions already arriving in HawaiiThreads.com keeping us busy enough?
I once assembled the USENET 'alt.culture.hawaii' FAQ (an incredible ten years ago) to try and collect the types of questions people commonly asked in the newsgroup, and some of the best answers. HawaiiAnswers.com continues in this spirit, and already has entries from "How to make a spam musubi?" to "Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?"
While there is already a mailing list where some of these questions are forwarded to a group of brainy answerfolk, I've noticed that HawaiiThreads.com sees its share of repeat questions, and more importantly, has several members who excel in providing great answers, researching if neccessary, and going above and beyond (even when the simplest answer is, "Just search for it yourself, dummy!").
So I was wondering if anyone thought it might be a good idea for some of the questions that come through HawaiiAnswers.com get posted on occasion to HawaiiThreads.com, in the correct forum but perhaps under a special username. Then y'all could give some input (knowing in advance it's for a more general audience), and people with questions could have an even greater selection and depth of answers.
To be sure, questions that are specific to a person ("I'm a mechanic and I want to live in Makiki, how much...") or specific to a time ("Where is the Bob Marley Festival next week?") wouldn't be HawaiiAnswers.com questions. And trust me, the site gets all kinds of stuff, particularly attempts to find ex wives, newspaper clippings, and "a list of all {x} in {y} that cost less than {z}." I'd be looking specifically to get help on questions that are more general, but require answers more "fuzzy" than just an encyclopedia entry or where different answers are possible.
There will also be straight "trivia" type questions, though, where Google has simply failed us ("What song was used in the commercial for...").
What do you think? Bring it on? Or is the natural flow of questions already arriving in HawaiiThreads.com keeping us busy enough?
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