Questions About Answers
CBS News is now providing its visitors with AnswerTips, a new feature that gives you instant definitions, explanations and facts about any word on the site: biographies, tech terms, geography, companies, culture and much more.More here. We played with the feature this morning, and found that, while it was helpful, it didn't always have the right, well, answers. For example: Alt-Click on the word "association" in this first or fifth paragraph of this story, and you get a definition of the word. But click on "association" in the sixth paragraph, and you get the rock band "The Association," which was apparently "one of the more underrated groups to come out of the mid- to late '60s."When you Alt-Click (press the alt key while clicking the mouse) on any word on the CBS News site, you get a small pop-up window - an AnswerTip - with a concise explanation of the word or phrase. And if the concise Answer isn't enough, the full collection of sources on that topic is available just by clicking on the "More" button.
I asked director of business development for CBSNews.com Bill Martens, who brokered the deal with Answers.com, about the results. "We accept that we are never going to achieve 100% accuracy," he wrote in an email, "however I think Answers does a remarkable job in most cases of analyzing context and delivering users the information they were looking for."
More troubling to us was the fact that Answers uses as one of its sources Wikipedia, the comprehensive, open-source online encyclopedia. (Answers lists some of its other sources here, among them Houghton Mifflin, Columbia University Press, Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, MarketWatch, and All Media Guide. Answers claims all of its sources are "top-quality.") As for Wikipedia, it can be a wonderful resource, but anyone can edit its contents, and it isn't always accurate. Did CBSNews.com really want to be offering up Wikipedia as a source for more information?
No, as it turns out. According to Martens, CBSNews.com blocks any Answers content that is sourced to Wikipedia. "Given the inherent risks associated with user generated content, we chose to launch the service without Wikipedia content for now," wrote Martens.