Are Top Contributors unopinionated burgeois....?

Question

.... who always say the safe, play it low, sort of like politicians who flatter the public taste above anything else ?

Fierce criticism welcomed.

What, no Top Contributor minds to answer ... ? Busy with the "meaning-of-life" questions ...?

Oh, I am so pleased with the asnwers....
Thank you, Tops, you just tought me a lesson.
Except lady IQ who lacks sense of humor.
I admit I asked out of frustration...
But it was sooo fun.

P.S. "Burgeois" is French original for burgeoisie, it's an adjective.

P.S.S. I get excited over this effervescence of different flavors of intelligence. . .

Answer 1

Arguably, few to none of the 'top contributors' are bourgeois, because they would have to be the owners of the means of production. And although Yahoo is a publicly traded company (its symbol is YHOO, if you want to actually be bourgeois) I doubt that would give you much of an edge around here, even if you were any kind of significant holder.

I think you're a little off the mark about 'playing it safe', too. All it really takes to be a top contributor is to have a certain number of best answers. You don't have to have a high percentage of them... just raw numbers. So even if only 5% of your answers get chosen as best (a rather modest goal, to be sure), then if you manage to pump out ten thousand of them you can take this section by storm.

As it is now, the top two 'top contributor's in philosophy (as far as I can see) are right around 20%. If that's all that being a bland flatterer gets you, then it's probably not worth the effort. I've observed that if you just go back and vote for your own answer you can actually get a number of bests just because few other people bother.

The last time I looked at the national leaderboard, too, it was pretty similar. People with a lot of points are usually just voting a ton or answering a ton. There are a few people with really high best answer percentages, but from what I've seen it's because they stick to a few specialties and answer them well.

You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion. As others have mentioned, it's probably a dubious honor to fight over. A friend of mine once said to me, "Who cares if you're on top, if all you're the top of is a bunch of yahoos?". Heh.

Answer 2

I'm not even sure how I got to become a "Top Contributor", which happened today as far as I can tell. Don't know any of the requirements, and they don't seem to be on the Y!A help page either.

Anyway, I think you have too high an opinion of Top Contributors. It's not like you get a prize, or prestige, or even women (or men). It's not exactly something you want printed on your business card or in your resume. So why would anyone try to attain that level (unless they seriously lacked a life)?

That's to say that I don't see why anyone would adopt a deliberate strategy, esp. if it runs contrary to their natural inclinations and actual beliefs, just to get more points. (I'm assuming playing it safe and not expressing one's own opinion is not people's first instinct.) Again, that would be pathetic.

P.S. You're misusing or misunderstanding what it means to be a bourgeoisie (note the correct spelling). Philosophers are notorious for being poor.

P.P.S. Read some of my previous answers if you think I'm unopinionated.

Answer 3

This is the philosophy forum, so I'd like to think that anyone here who has the label of top contributor (if not also in the other forums) can at least be credited with always giving their true opinion, not just "flattering the public taste". Such a practice as that is the business of sophists, who have no business in this forum.

If you really want to know, why don't you ask a provocative question and see how the top contributor responses compare to others, rather than wasting time trying to pick a fight with other members of the board?

Answer 4

I resemble that remark...lol! By the way, you're looking fabulous today! ;)

No, actually I've gotten lots of best answers on a variety of topics (I happen to like baby names, which is ironic since I neither have, nor plan on having kids).

Actually though, I am shocked at some of my answers that are picked as best. I have outright insulted several people who have still picked me for best answer. So no, I don't really give my answers to flatter or agree unless I really mean it. Conversely, I do have the ability to see both sides of an argument so I have the ability to empathize and see reason and sense passion and sincerity. Maybe that helps.

*By the way, I was a top contributor in the baby names category, but I got bumped today!

Answer 5

For the most part top contributors are the people who take the time to vote on undecided questions (there are over a million of them!) out of the goodness of their heart. Some of us look through questions to find the ones not properly answered, the ones not answered at all, the ones with only completely wrong or misleading answers, we only want to help people get a useful and relatively correct (where possible) answer, whether it is entertaining to you is really not a fulfilling purpose, stirring the pot is only useful in a conversational argument, and a one off answer is no place for a combatative disagreement. Finally, can you really blame us if reading through scores of questions and thousands of answers a day leaves us a little too burnt out to give the most imaginative answers?

Answer 6

I was a 'top contributor', but not now. I think it is some kind of arbitrary label based on a randomly chosen quantification for daily input, or some such rate of input. People with much time on their hands are more able to send masses of responses, while those like myself who must work much of the time, have precious little time remaining to offer freely. Quality for answers? Everyone, in the end, must judge for their self. This labeling is not of my Judgment nor my Will.

The Will is positive, the Judgment is negative.

Answer 7

I don't think that is the case every time. I have seen some really thought out answers on here that were rated best answer. You should try to remember that there are many teenagers on here who ask questions and they tend to vote for the best answer by what they want to hear. I'll tell you what, when I finally ask a question I will vote objectively and pick the answer with the most meat to it!

Answer 8

I haven't quite been around long enough to notice any such trend, however, I have seen many answers that I think were merely posted in an attempt to grab the 10 points, rather than a sincere attempt to answer the question.

Answer 9

I've noticed a lot of Top Contributors go around campaigning for 'best answers'....so they have ridiculous best answer to answer ratios.

I find all my best answers were inadvertenly playing to the ear of the asker, so in a sense you are right, the answerer is just flattering the asker's taste above anything else.

Answer 10

well i just looked at that 'who's the most evil person in the world?' question, and one of the top contributers said 'pol pot (i bet you never heard of him)'. What's the purpose of that last sentence other than to make yourself look cleverer than other people? and how often will that in fact just make you look pretty odd? I think that's proof there that top contributers aren't always the cleverest ones.
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