As a first-time dad of a two year old, I continually find myself being humbled by how much I have still to learn about being a great father. Every time I think I’ve got something down with my son, he throws a curve ball our way and we go back to the drawing board. I am realizing that this full time job — parenting — is one where I am constantly learning and seeking advice, and I don’t think it is ever going to stop.
My wife and I have found the web to be very helpful for a lot of answers to our questions that we have about our son, when it comes to simple issues like when to potty train, to more complex ones like “Why is our son not eating?” But, as we have found, we can spend hours on the web finding the answers to our questions and we can get many different opinions from people. That is great, but I would love to be able to condense that into one site — where hopefully the answers are all high quality.
As I was looking for answers to a question a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon Quib.ly, which is a question and answer site, similar to Quora and the like, but puts its focus on parenting and technology. Those are two areas where I can offer help and learn a great deal from so I thought I would give it a spin to see how beneficial it could be for me.
Asking Questions
There are two main features in Quib.ly: you can ask a question or you can answer them. There are a couple of ways to do this. First, you can search for the topic that you are looking for and if it isn’t already being asked, then you can create a question for the community to answer. You can categorize it as well as request what kind of answers you are looking for, whether you want someone with experience, their opinion, or facts.
Asking a question on Quib.ly
Secondly, you can search through topics to see if you can find more information about something that you are curious about. When you find a topic or a question that you want to continue to see what people answer or ask, you can follow them and any time someone answers the question, you will get an email letting you know. This is a nice feature in that you don’t always have to go back to the site to see responses from others. The downside is that if the question is popular, your inbox can get flooded pretty quickly, but you can always unfollow it if it gets too overwhelming for you.
Contributing to Questions
Of course, sites like this only survive if there are people that are willing to answer questions that are being asked. It is very easy to answer a question if you feel like you can contribute to the community. On the homepage you will see featured as well as trending questions that you can answer and you can also go to a specific topic and browse what others are asking. When answering a question, you are given a few editing tools to have at your disposal. You can also answer it anonymously if you don’t want to let people know that you are answering.
Quib.ly homepage
There are also some social features that are built in when answering questions. You can up vote someone’s answer if you feel it is a good one. You can also share other’s contributions to Twitter and Facebook. Lastly, you can comment on the answers that others give, which is a good way to interact with people, especially if you are asking the question and you want clarification on someone’s answer.
Answering a question
Can It Work?
Question and answer sites have been around for a little while now, and there are a few that stand out, so the question is, “Can Quib.ly?” make it? I personally think they can because what they have done is that they have carved out a nice little niche for themselves. With their focus on parenting and technology, they will attract people who may not want to use other sites like Quora, but would use this. Although Quib.ly does have a focus of technology, it doesn’t feel like it is too nerdy to use or that your average web user can’t feel like they can benefit from it.
In my experience with using the site, I found that when I asked a question I got thoughtful answers from those who had experience or had a wealth of knowledge on the topic. I really felt like I was getting quality answers to what I was asking. I also felt that when I answered a question, I got great feedback from the person asking the question or others who were answering as well. I felt like we all could be a part of the conversation and it didn’t stop when I answered the question. People would ask followup questions to continue conversing with you. It seemed like people were genuinely interested in knowing what others had to say.
Final Thoughts
Quib.ly is currently in beta and you can sign up using your Facebook account or your email to get instant access. The site itself worked well and I found it very helpful in finding out answers to my parenting questions. I think they have done a good job with the site and I like that they are focusing on two topics that a lot of people can relate to and they haven’t just made it another question and answer site. Quib.ly is free to use at the moment and is really handy. So, if you are looking for parenting and/or technology advice, I would highly suggest you head over to Quib.ly to check it out and if you are an expert on these topics, I would love to get your wisdom as well.