AllExperts

AllExperts is now closed down, with no back-up of all the knowledge and questions answered by so many experts. Well, that is part and parcel of why they weren't successful and had problems with the site, this lac of attention to detail.
I was one of the top experts on Allexperts for over 10 years in the areas of Dog Training and Dog Behavior. I also did not get the notice that the site was shutting down. I finally tried to load the site as I hadn't gotten a question in quite a long time, months at least, perhaps a year.
All the criticisms posted that I have read by other AllExperts are fair, and I agree. One of the further issues I had with the structure of the site was that we were all 'out there' as experts and not anonymous, and the questioners got to be anonymous. My field being a predominantly female-attracting one, and rather competitive, snarky and backbiting, I was sure that some of my competition were asking me silly questions, which I often politely and professionally answered, only to give me poor ratings, usually on 'politeness' or some other aspect which made no sense. I would write to Allexperts, and, for the most part, they were very good at removing ratings which were unfair to me. In a couple of instances I asked them to check the IP addresses of some of the lousy ratings I received, and it turned out that a few of them were matches; that is, that the same persons were repeatedly e-mailing me questions which sounded legitimate just so they could bring down my ratings after I responded. As posted by many other Experts, these ratings were our only "earnings." It was distressing. About a year ago, I changed to a format where I charged for responses, and at about that time, I got a few questions I rejected because the questioners hadn't paid the $25 fee I requested, which I explained was going to animal charities, not into my pocket. Getting a fair rating became so difficult within the last several years that I told questioners in my bio that if they rated me fairly and promptly, that I would randomly make anywhere from a $10 - $25 donation to an animal-related charity or shelter for their fair and prompt rating; and, I DID, many times. Even with this carrot, I still got people who rated me unfairly, and I wrote to them and told them that they had just cost some shelter a $25 donation. Then, I'd ask AllExperts to remove the rating, and if they agreed it was unfair (which in almost all cases they did), the unfair rating was removed. I suggested many times that they unmask questioners so that my competition couldn't get away with this any longer. Obviously, they never implemented my request. I wish I knew they were shutting down, because I would have liked to turn many of my responses (probably about 500) into a book about dog training and behavior. I guess I waited a bit too long. In any case, I have to admit I'm a bit relieved that I won't need to be fielding fake questions any longer. I actually was becoming really quite good at sorting out the fakers from the real questioners. That aspect helped me greatly in my selection skills of actual customers during phone intakes. I became quite adept at sorting out the people with whom I wouldn't enjoy working from those who would appreciate what I have to offer.

SECOND REVISION (2/28/16)

AllExperts is a useful service that's unfortunately badly compromised by poor administration. I speak as both a user (asking questions) and an expert (providing answers).

Well organized by nearly every conceivable subject area, the site facilitates users' inquiries to individual experts selected by those users on the basis of displayed qualifications as submitted by the experts. The experts' answers are rated by the users receiving them, according to knowledgeability, clarity, and politeness. The expert base is considerable, allowing users in many cases to choose from multiple experts. New experts are linked to a complex set of rules (not ordinarily seen by the users) and encouraged to email questions to site administration.

There are serious problems for both experts and users. The first two points relate to customer service:

1. Despite the encouragement alluded to above, questions by experts seem uniformly to be ignored. Using the special experts' channel, I've emailed many successive questions to the site (and reminders), all without response.

2. The same appears largely to be true of users' questions to the site (not to the experts). My correspondence to the site as a user--before I was registered as an expert--got one reply, but other questions were entirely ignored.

3. The system allows experts to easily pass over questions they don't want to bother with. An expert can choose a canned non-answer to be sent to the user, and even if the expert does nothing there is almost always no penalty. It is theoretically possible for an expert to be eventually dismissed for repeatedly ignoring questions, but the expert would probably have to be dead before that would happen.

4. When a user does not choose to rate, the expert's rating on each attribute defaults to 10 (the highest). Successive ratings for each expert are averaged and those averages are prominently displayed--but unbeknown to users and probably many experts, there is as buried in the material sent to new experts a practice that outlier ratings are ignored. These facts, together with those in point #3 above, result in average ratings that are essentially meaningless.

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In sum, AllExperts can be a good resource for finding answers--certainly better than the undeservedly popular Yahoo Answers--and many experts supply excellent responses. Don't expect too much, however, from any particular expert, high rating notwithstanding.

(Feel free to ask me a question. I'm Richard Johnson in the General Writing and Grammar sub-category.)