ChaCha Blog

This week on Ask the Dean, we address injecting political opinion, gazing into the crystal ball, and choosing multiple citations. Let’s get right to them…

Hello Dean,
I am an ardent Democrat, and am very excited about Obama’s chances for president. It’s hard for me to be neutral when I see questions like “Who won the presidential debate?” The newspapers all say different things, so can I just say my own personal opinion in the answer?
-I’m 4 Obama

Dear “I’m 4 Obama”:
Passions run high around Election time, but as professional information providers, ChaCha Guides are best off keep their own opinions to themselves, unless specifically asked. (And some InfoSeekers do ask!)

On questions about “Who won the debate?” it’s safest to cite one of the major U.S. newspapers or news networks, which despite their leanings in one direction or another, do provide generally balanced coverage. Basically, you want to provide an answer and citation that someone of an opposing viewpoint would respect as professional. Put yourself in the InfoSeeker’s shoes. You’d want “fair and balanced” answers to all your questions.

I once heard the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. say “Keep your words soft and sweet – you never know when you’ll have to eat them.” Pretty good advice.

Whoever wins in November, ChaCha will still be around, so we’d like to hold onto our friends from both sides of the political aisle.

-The Dean

Hello,
What do I do for “crystal ball” questions such as “Will I marry Jonathon?”. What page should I cite? Thanks!
- Citing the Future

Dear “Citing the Future”:
Good question. The preferred ChaCha approach to finding citations for these crystal ball questions is:

1. Use a directly relevant website whenever possible.
For a question like “Does Jonathon like me?” there are excellent sources in the Advice Finder in Quick Links that take 15 seconds start to finish to use. You and the InfoSeeker might both learn something by finding a real source.

2. Use the ChaCha Conversational Page as a backup.
This can be found in the Customer Service category in Quick Links. It is nicely formatted for mobile phones and contains general info about ChaCha for customers. Use this instead of just ChaCha.com for those questions like “Will I marry Jonathon?” where a real website just doesn’t apply. Or, you can also use the Magic 8-Ball type sites that are out there on the web. Your call.

Please don’t use ChaCha.com unless the question is specifically about ChaCha.

-The Dean

Hi Dean,
With the new Universe, you can link multiple sources for a query. What is the new policy concerning using multiple links, or should we continue using one link which best answers the query? Thanks.
- Seeing Double

Dear “Seeing Double”:
It’s up to you. Only one citation link is required, but we provided the ability to add multiple sources because sometimes you end up finding more than one good source as you’re searching. So why not share that with the InfoSeeker!

Please be aware of our Black list, which are websites not approved for use as citations. This applies to all sources you select for an answer.

- The Dean

Thanks for reading!