I will rate this question... I've notice a significant decrease in the number answers to LinkedIn questions. Do you think the quality of the questions

Alison's Contribution:

Why is there a significant decrease int he number of answers to LinkedIn questions? is one starting point and in my opinion, the best to elicit the best response.

NB: I haven't read the rest of the answers, just wanted to note a couple of things.

Starting point: The community of Answers is but an insignificant fraction of 1% of the total membership of LinkedIn.

1. Many questions are answered with the first answer - which is great because no one else needs to spend time answering. Bad on the ratings front though because why would you give the sole answerer the best answer simply because they were the only answerer.

2. Quality of answers is probably a more important factor. So is there any evidence that the quality of Answers has decreased? I don't think so. Over the past three years, any technical question in a niche has suffered until a leader appears to take an interest in helping out the community. Do they make the leaderboard? No - because the leaderboard is biased towards those that answer any question going - some by posting one word/one line quips which add no value.

I would think many of the technical questions would be better served by Group discussions - provided there was critical mass and participation by their members.

Rating questions is a red herring in my humble opinion (and again, no I don't expect to be selected as best answerer on this one because I don't happen to agree with one of your pet peeves at the moment).

Is there a drop in participation? Now that is a different question.

In terms of questions asked, I don't have absolute numbers. There are more than 500 questions being asked within a 24 hour period on a regular basis on Answers. Don't have any idea about the effect of Group activity on Answers, but would expect there to be a decrease.

Now a completely different question to ask is "Do people feel put off answering questions because the "leaderboard" targets are too high for them to aspire to?"

And yes, one of my pet peeves at the moment are Answerers who provide a single word or single line quip to "chalk up" another answer to maintain their lead. I think that is more of a deterrent than anything else I've mentioned.

Hope this helps.

Alison
posted 10 hours ago