Are there any old-timers of this site who could tell us how AB is different now than it has been before?

It's been awhile, but I will try to recall as accurately as possible.

APPEARANCE:

AB looked very basic. No pictures/graphics, no avatars, just basic blue and orange AB logo.

The homepage listed new questions and to the right was the Top Contributor (not Leaderboard) list. That list was most questions asked, most questions answered, most glossary terms, top 5 in terms of positive percentage for answers.

There was also a little section at the very bottom with a catchy tag line that seemed to be a way drawing attention to a particular topic or good questions.

QUESTIONS:

Were great. Wickedwillie, an AB'er from the Netherlands asked a many good questions. Questions were also "cleaned up" (spelling abbreviations, worded to be more clear) by moderators.

When a question was new, it was marked as such in red so that one new there was still the possibility that it would be rejected by the moderators. Answer at your own risk.

Questions that were subjective, silly, etc. were rejected. Far fewer duplicates since AB was smaller.

Questions were not rated at all. And they didn't disappear into the abyss almost as soon as they were asked and answered.

ANSWERS:

Answers could be rated, useful, somewhat useful, spam/offensive, or incorrect all of which assigned a different %. Useful was 100%, somewhat useful, spam/offensive was 0%, so on and so forth. I can't remember the exact percentage for anything but those 2.

Answers were usually very good, thoughtful, and cited (I always cited a source if I did not author an answer or borrowed heavily from a source to do so).

COMMENTS:

If you rated an answer down, you had to leave a comment. The only way one could respond to a comment was to edit their answer and address the person or post an entirely new answer as a rebuttle.


USERS:

Some ancient AB'ers are still around, some aren't as active, and some just left for good. Which is sad because these are the people that helped "build" a lot of what you're seeing today.

Wickedwillie watched a lot of Discovery Channel and formulated excellent questions as a result.

Bob and Glenn Blaylock are still around--not much has changed there :)

Kim and Mary Siever were both very active. Kim should have his own level--very objective and always intelligent answers. Mary had a lot of parctial expertise in many things and always contributed heartfelt and intelligent answers.

Jervinator: Nothing has changed there thank goodness

Jodie44 and Auntie Em are always good for reliable and solid answers still. Again, glad they haven't given up on AB.

Astaroth was good for answering some tough and unusual questions, MP1116 was the top Relationship Expert.

These were also usually the Top Contributors too.

That is all I can pull off the top of my head now, I will update this if I think of anything else.

Oh and Definitions received ratings too (I of all people should not have forgotten that).

Well, it looks different, for one thing. Also, I'm here, and I showed up about the time Answerbag started to take a turn for the worse, apparently. Oh, I can't remember that history. I heard that there was once a time when people actually answered real questions and helped people with their problems, rather than just spend two hours a day talking about bullshit like I do.

It's changed a lot. I tried to recall as much as I could here and to be fair I didn't get here until early 2004: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/113240

people :D

the ratio is astounding! its like 3 vs 50x.... x being your own guess at an amount of zeros :D

I've been in and out of AB for several years. I do remember a few things that make it different from what it is now:

>> When you downrate somebody, you HAVE TO leave a comment WHY. [and prepare yourself for the downrating that's sure to follow]

>> Ratings were letters, like +A, +B, -C, etc

No one responded, even though I am really interested in the history of the site. In the meantime, I found some stuff out from other questions. I'm going to post one of Jodie's post here. That's the most informative thing I've seen about the history of the site.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/111221/249540

I wish I could, but listen to the others who have answered this.