Can quality be quantified? Could quality be reckoned through statistical data? How else can we assess quality?

Question

For instance, how effective is YA in assessing quality when it awards the Top Contributor tag to a few answerers based on their accumulated number of Best Answers?

Answer 1

Although quality for me is subjective but this could be quantified in terms of percentage. You may say 100% quality. In other words the quality being guaranteed here is the degree of excellence or relative goodness of a product.

Honestly i don't have a personal knowledge or idea as to how Yahoo Answers awards the Top Contributor Tag to deserving people like you. I believe they have certain percentage you must reach in a specific category. But there are some Answerers who have reached as high as 30 % plus Best Answers but they haven't given the prestigious tag. Actually am not sure if they are after the quality or they just follow a formula before one attains the Orange Tag. It is really subjective on the part of the Answers Team.

Thanks for asking and have a great day!

Answer 2

An excerpt from the Urantia book concerning quality and quantity:

"Quantity may be identified as a fact, thus becoming a scientific uniformity. Quality, being a matter of mind interpretation, represents an estimate of values, and must, therefore, remain an experience of the individual..."

Y!Answers is simply awarding the Top Contributor tag to those that pass several criteria concerning the number of best answers they have. However, these answers are voted as best either by the one who makes a question, by the people in the Y!Answers community or, if there isn't much interest, by the replier alone who votes his answer just to get 10 extra points. Therefore, there are three different situations which add up and form the amount of best answers someone has. It has nothing to do with how Y!Answers assess quality, but how the inquirer and the voters "estimate" it according to their own criteria and only. As the Urantia book says, quality is a matter of personal interpretation, not something that could be measured by any scientific method. Hope that helps!

Answer 3

Quality is always quantified to varying degrees of precision.

Most typical are the fairly loose, deeply subjective estimations of quality we daily give to the things around us.
If we are pleased a thing has consistently performed to or above the standards we expect, it's quality.

And of course there is the slightly less subjective scientific approach, that absolutely determines quality through precise measurements and statistical data.

I say slightly less subjective because 'quality' is based on standards, and pretty much anyone can set a standard.

I suspect what ever standard YA designers have set for 'Top Contributor' is being accurately displayed, but the term 'effective' implies there is some objective standard for TC which isn't the case.

But hey, it's good to know a lot of people like your answers.
And that's no Small thing.
;-)

Answer 4

Quality is a moot point because no two people would ever agree on a quality answer. So, I believe Yahoo has decided to equate quantity with quality.

Answer 5

well buddy, you have asked a question which would take at least a session to give you a satisfactory and convincing answer but if you can spare time try reading concept and ideology of TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT, TQM for short, which says EVERY THING DONE RIGHT FIRST TIME,EVERY TIME AND ALL THE TIME......this leads to the award of ISO standards all over the world...check on the site www.ssqmi.com

Answer 6

The character can be quantified by how many friends a person has in his lifetime.