Rediff Q &A: An Indian Q &A Site

Originally, Rediff.com was intended to be a portal. With stiff competition in this front while baring chest with biggies like yahoo, rediff.com was forced to look at other avenues to make money. They then started selling advertising, hosting space and domains and now they have a Q &A section on rediff.com. How does it fare? Does it have anything to go for it? Let’s strip it:

Quality? Frankly, I am clueless

This is probably one of those rare sights where you see both quality and trash walking hand-in-hand. While some of the questions and answer bits are intriguing and thought-provoking, some of the others are pure trash – usually tend to fall on racist statements, sexual innuendos and well, some dumb questions.  The site could do with some heavy moderation but it looks like it’s not going to be a day’s work.

An easy sign-up process

It does need you to sign-up to be able to ask questions or to answer questions. However, it’s relieving to find out that it’s barely a fraction of a page long with just a few fields to enter. You will want to sign-up for some of the following two reasons: if you are an Indian (or not!) and if you love anything related to India, you should be here; secondly, If you are a company marketing your products or services to the Indian consumer, you should work on this site. The only thing that worries me is the lack of any moderation and the unexpected nature of answers that tumble out of the user-base.

Categories are distinctly Indian

Remember that it’s an Indian Q & A site and it truly has that spice and that Indian flavour all over it. Although some of the categories are fairly general, some of the category topics are fairly Indian in nature such as Bollywood & movies, for instance. A substantial number of questions on each of the other categories also tend to skew towards an Indian perspective on those topics. If you are an Indian, you will to relate to them all. Whether or not you will stick to the “browse” section of the site depends on you. I don’t if it’s just me but I find that about 80% of the questions lacking in depth. Probably I am cursed with “perfectitis”.

The Hall of fame

I am glad I finally found something that I think every Q &A site and business website must incorporate: game mechanics. Badges of honour, leader-boards, etc, go a long way in ensuring long-term user-base and enhanced brand recognition. Rediff does that with its leader-board called “the hall of fame” – top contributing users (those that have contributed a whopping 100 answers per week) have their usernames displayed with their photos (if any), their scores and their respective ratings. That’s a full point for Rediff, isn’t it?

Have you been to India’s answer to the Q &A world? What are your thoughts? Do you think you will gain insights into Incredible India?