On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Jacob Schmude <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My point was simply that in the very complex languages it would be > difficult to have an answer to a question that could cover al the possible > answers. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. But this is nitpicking and not going to come up most of the time. If it does, it's a problem with the question and the question should be changed. Here's my problem with the below quoted sample question and answers mentioned previously: The question: > If you have four apples and you give your friend two, how many apples do > you have left? A contrived reply: > Of course the answer is "half", "less", "not enough", "What's an Apple?", > "two", "II", "2", "0x00010".. (by the way, 0x00010 would be hex for 16, 0b10 binary for 2) The problem with the reply: no English speaker in their right mind would actually use most of those answers, otherwise they have a fundamental problem in either comprehending the question or answering, in which case they might as well be spammers. The assumption is that the question is in English, and the answer therefore should be in English, and in English when you are asked "how many apples do you have left if you had four and gave away two" by occam's razor the two possible answers are the integer "2" and a case-insensitive match of the word "two", which are trivial to implement on the website's side (not thinking of the possibility of an integer and a word as representations of a number is the fault of the programmer). Yes, you ARE going to have some people submitting nonsense like the rest of the "answers", but that is their problem, not yours, as long as your questions are unambigious. Short of asking a question like "What is your life story?", simple math (like the apples) and implied answers (like my Apple-blog example before) and such similar questions should be more than enough. If you have a specialized audience, you can customize your question even more. But how would that work for say a site like Paypal or another > banking-related one? Perfect for blogs an forums, though. Paypal and banks and similar institutions have other methods. Bank accounts, credit cards, showing up in person at the bank, phone numbers and more. Blogs and forums don't have that kind of luxury. cheers, jane
