Answer Boards and Social Searching

So appalling is the quality of some of the answers to the Australian History questions on Yahoo! Seven Answers that perhaps we have a duty to participate and bring our expertise to bear on the answers boards, something I have to confess I haven't had much to do with despite the RISG initiative. As they stand, you could use those answers on Yahoo in support of the the the thesis in Andrew Keen's book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and
Assaulting Our Economy, London/Boston,Nicholas Brealey,2007. One thing, the answer boards idea of enabling rating of the quality of the answers, if used by libraries, would be a way of getting immediate feedback on the quality of online reference service, at least, rather than having to rely on occassional user surveys.