User blog:Angel Emfrbl/Answer me please?!

Yeah there is a wikia out there to answer those annoyinh questions... But a quick glance at yahoo answers made me wonder...

You Asked for Any Answer Right?
After a vocaloid search led me to a biased reply on Yahoo answers, I sat there and wondered why are these services so damn popular. Think about, we have a whole page on Luffy here, so why is there a need to ask a question about Luffy on wiki answers when a 5 min glance at our page will do the trick? Yeah I asked a question and I'll answer this myself - laziness and/or the lesser extend of mistrust of information.

We've all heard on Arlong Park and the other One Piece fan hangouts, even when the wikia is RIGHT we've got to prove we are to them that we are. Its like entertaining a 5 year child sometimes dealing with the One Piece fandom, wherein no matter how much you try to please, the child isn't paying attention to what you're doing only that your there to amuse them. Okay, noting when we're wrong is one thing, but pulling us up for getting it right is another thing. Sesh!

Anyway, that leds me to wiki and yahoo answers - seriously why? Why ask a random stranger who may or may not be a One Piece fan if something is true? Walking into a fan forum is different to random strangers... How? And after a few vocaloid replies to questions I only can frown at those who often respond to these questions. One reply on Yahoo answers to the question "what is the story behind the Vocaloids" or however it went was completely biased towards "Engloids" (name for english vocaloids) that not only did she/he fail to answer their question, she slipped up in her rant of them and praise to their Japanese counterparts and left misinformation. Poor Miriam wasn't even mentioned of their list of pre-Japanese Vocaloid releases. I had to reply to tell this person, from our persecptive the Japanese vocaloids only sound "better" because we're not Japanese and therefore can't tell their pronouications are awful. Theres a reason why Miku, Rin and Len all had to be updated soon after release (Miku just got another update recently planned to make her sound human and not a robot), the twins Rin and Len in particular were just plain awful! So for all this person's biasedness toward Engloids was worth, they ended up not only failing to give a decent answer but got their opinions and facts muddled up in their mess.

Actually, Big-Al has the bes tvoice for the "Engloids" to date, its a lot smoother then some folks believe it to be and even the Japanese vocaloid users admit its good. Though their more fasincated by the cute (as in "child-like") way he messes up their language (in their attempts to make him sing Japanese) when you don't do things right (like using "@" instead of "@u") since his vowels have a habbit of hitting hard and sharp when you don't want them to. But we're referring to a program that can't pronounce "wind" right still (the english language is complex) and ends up saying "we-in" instead. With Japanese there really isn't much to their language to go wrong with, so they are easier to work with for them (but harder for English fans), though one attraction to the Engloids is that if you can master them, just about every other Europeon language falls just one step within your grasp.

And Yahoo answers if full of peoplle asking how to make Japanese vocaloids speak English when there are the Engloids because of this high almighty biasedness going on in the English speaking fandom (their not really "fans", its more like "admirers"). I lost track of how many times no one actually pointed out the Japanese vocaloids just can't pull the stunt off, for there is a difficult list you must read to learn how to make them remotely sound English. And even then once you've tracked that down they'll never be perfect when you do get it sorted, they'll pull off only understandable Engrish out of their voice banks. Then some clueless one always points to Luka as the "best" example of english there is (often to the point where they will use her to diss the Engloids because she can do English and Japanese). So you've got to explain to them, she can only speak Engrish in reality and actually has a limited English capablity in her voice banks since they didn't really put much effort into that part of her. And yet no matter how much you push and insist this person's wrong, it doesn't matter because by then they'e already got the top answer for that question even they've got it completely wrong. And besides they insist their right.

Imagine going into a forum with nothing but 100+ 13 year olds and younger and you're the only one who has read the book their forum is about. Thats the English speaking vocaloid community in a nutshell. I only know what I know because I wanted to OWN the program for my own reasons.

But thats still the point isn't it? Why READ the information yourself when you can ask the question and get some poor sap to answer it? Okay its not ness. right but it saves you time doesn't it? But when you're being misled by the WRONG answer isn't it just easier to read the information yourself in the end? And from time to time, the questions will take MONTHS to get answered correctlty. And then there are the other versions of the same question with different wording out there besides yours. Why did you ask that question when another 99 people already asked the same question you did?

And then every so often, you get the question you can't answer - one thats impossible to back up with facts because that information just doesn't exist. These are the fan questions aimed at other fans, these kind of questions aren't worth even looking at. Like "Who is Luffy's mother". All you can say is "We don't know yet", these type of questions are actually trying to spark up a fan bid conversation sometimes and/or speculatiom and not a true honest "give me the answer now!" type of question.

3 more dumb questions later I logged off of yahoo answer and went into "facepalm" mode. I was going to investigate the One Piece related questions but decided that wiki answers One Piece replies were bad enough at times. At least with wiki answers you've got half a chance to get the RIGHT info put out and not the wrong info forever engraved on the site.

And why do these sites need to exist even still with wikias around? Going back to the fandom, we've got our source of problems, but we're still a better source of information then yahoo answers. And at least we try to back up our information with solid facts, whereas yahoo answers, honestly you can write crap and someone will believe you.

And a Final Note
The first time I can across yahoo answers was to get some help for writing out a song so I could work with it via vocaloid. I know the tune but not the musical notes on paper. Instead I faced a long list of "Can I sing?" questions which shocked me to no end. Such a question was open to opinion from "don't give up your day job" to "wow yourawsome!" which still amuses me to this day. Long story short though, never got my answer despite asking. So I never got to attempt the vocaloid (just as well I never bought one...).

Also despite knowing bit-torrents are illegal, why do people become so open with asking how to use one? Though I must confess half the problem is Japanese vocaloids are region locked so non-Japanese can't get hold of them (ironic as engloids aren't normally), thats still just stupidity. Those answer them are asking for no less trouble then the askers. And with Sonika cheap (£60 compared to the normal £80+) you just keep asking yourself over and over again "why". These programs aren't too great, though if your forking out that money for something you'd hardly use I'd understand it, but their not too expensive its a problem. Photoshop elements cost my dad more...

I remember when "Ask Jeeves" (now just "Ask") was the ONLY time you'd bother with asking questions on the net.

But part of me thinks that Yahoo answers may be one major source of every fandoms headaches and "noobs". O_o'