In this article, we take a look at the best question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on the Internet.
There are thousands of Q&A websites today but the 15 covered in this article have distinguished themselves from their peers and made an indelible mark within their target audience.
What is a Q&A Website?
Q&A websites allow ordinary Internet users to ask questions and receive answers from anyone willing or paid to help.
Depending on each Q&A site’s model, the questions may be asked publicly or anonymously. Answers are provided by other ordinary users of the site or by pre-approved subject-matter experts.
For the purpose of this list of best Q&A websites, we have included only those that meet the following criteria:
- Questions and answers are publicly viewable (and not hidden behind a registration and/or pay wall). This rules out websites like HealthTap where the Q&As are not accessible publicly.
- Questions are raised by an ordinary user (this is often a registered member of the website though some Q&A sites allow unregistered visitors to ask questions as well).
What are the best Q&A Websites in 2024?
1. Answers.com
Category: General
Launched in 2005, Answers.com has a large database of Q&As featuring tens of millions of questions. Previously known as WikiAnswers, users pose questions and one or more other members of the community answer it.
The community votes each response up or down to identify the best one by consensus.
Questions are placed in one of 19 major categories such as auto, business, electronics, history, science and sports.
While the Q&As are accessible to anyone that visits Answers.com, only signed up members can submit a question or answer.
A leaderboard shows the top 100 members in a given week and of all time primarily based on the number of and quality of answers they shared.
2. ASKfm
Category: General
Founded in 2010, ASKfm is a social networking platform built around a Q&A format. With hundreds of millions of registered users, it is sometimes regarded as the largest purely Q&A social networking site.
Only registered users can post questions but they can choose to do that openly or anonymously. Both questions and answers are however visible to the public.
Q&As fall in one of six sections – free time, love and relationships, recommendations, personal questions, trending and LOL.
Following allegations of cyberbullying on the platform, ASKfm introduced new rules, guidelines and safety policies that aim to make it harder for bad actors to use it with ill intent.
3. Ask MetaFilter
Category: General
Launched in 2003, Ask MetaFilter (or AskMe) is a Reddit-like Q&A subsite of the community weblog MetaFilter (also known as MeFi).
Ask MetaFilter addresses a broad range of member topics including health, work, relationships, pets, music, food and travel. Users are allowed to ask no more than one question per week and can do so anonymously.
While Ask MetaFilter has nowhere near the reach and volume of Reddit, it has a strong, close-knit community. Despite the relatively small number of members, nearly every question posed gets at least a couple of responses.
4. Blurtit
Category: General
Founded in 2006, Blurtit is a mostly community-governed Q&A platform. It looks less like a conventional Q&A site and more like a message board or a social networking forum.
In line with its message board-style format, the answers to a question may start a conversation where the original asker sometimes provides or requests further clarification in the comments.
Both registered and non-registered users can post questions on the site. This is a departure from the rule on most major Q&A sites where non-registered users are limited to read-only access. However, only registered members can answer a question.
Blurtit questions fall in one of more than 20 categories with the most popular being science, health, technology, education and relationships.
5. Brainly
Category: Educational
Started in 2009, Brainly is a large knowledge-sharing and social-learning educational platform that brings together students and experts to resolve difficult homework questions. Students have to create an account on the site before they can pose a question.
Teachers, star students and subject matter experts break down answers into detailed step by step explanations.
A daily leaderboard shows the highest ranked experts by contribution. Brainly has a browser extension allowing quicker search for answers.
It is also available as an app on Google Play and Apple App Store. Using the app, students scan questions using a phone camera.
Starting 2023, the company rolled out numerous AI-powered features including a tutor and personalization.
6. Fixya
Category: Troubleshooting
Launched in 2005, Fixya is a community-driven Q&A website where registered users post questions on how to fix diverse consumer products across dozens of categories.
Other members of the forum subsequently provide answers based on their expert knowledge and experiences.
Some of the more popular question categories include household and kitchen appliances, sports and outdoors, and tools and hardware.
The website has a plain Google-like homepage to draw the visitor’s attention to the question box at its center. A leaderboard displays the most active experts during the previous week.
Manufacturers and other corporate brands whose products are (or could be) discussed on Fixya can create a corporate account to engage current users and potential buyers.
7. JustAnswer
Category: General
JustAnswer was founded in 2003 as a Q&A service that connects users with experts. Questions cover a wide range of topics such as technology, tax. health, legal, electronics, automobiles and accounting.
You must be a subscriber to ask a question. However, a large pool of Q&As on the site are accessible to the public.
Unlike the community-run model of many Q&A websites where votes determine the most suitable response, the questions on JustAnswer are answered by pre-vetted experts only.
In turn, the experts are compensated each time they answer a question.
8. MadSci Network
Category: Educational
Founded in 1995, MadSci Network (also known as MadSciNet) is an educational website that is best known for its Ask-a-Scientist forum.
Users (typically K-12 teachers or students) must provide their grade level as well as the question’s subject area in science before they can submit a question.
Questions are first reviewed by a volunteer moderator to confirm they comply with forum rules before they are approved for answering.
The question is answered by a panel comprising hundreds of volunteer scientists. Answers are reviewed by moderators before they are published and made publicly available.
MadSci Network has a simple, fast, light and classic design, perhaps in line with its roots in academia as well as its history going back to the earliest days of the Internet.
9. Quora
Category: General
Launched in 2009, Quora is the platform many people would first think of when they imagine a Q&A website. Arguably the most popular Q&A site on the planet today, it was founded by two former employees of Facebook.
Users submit questions on any topic. The questions are then edited, organized and answered by the rest of the site’s user community.
One of the biggest drivers of Quora’s growth and visibility has been the integration of its Q&As into Google search results.
Today, ask any question on Google search and there is a good chance a Quora answer will be among the top results.
10. Reddit
Category: General
Started in 2005, Reddit is a social news aggregator, content rating and discussion forum. Users create and share diverse content.
It has user-created subreddits which are smaller communities focused on specific interests. Reddit’s Q&As regularly go viral.
By virtue of visitor traffic, Reddit is a more popular website overall compared to Quora. However, unlike Quora, Reddit is a multi-faceted platform where Q&A is one aspect – albeit a hugely popular one.
It also has a more irreverent tone and delves into topics that may be considered a little unconventional or somewhat controversial.
11. Socratic
Category: Educational
Launched in 2013, Socratic started off as a standard Q&A website for diverse academic questions as posed by (or as relevant for) high school and college students. Subjects covered include math, science and literature.
It was acquired by Google in March 2018 and made some changes. Most significant is that the site was closed to user Q&A contributions from August 2018.
While users could no longer ask, answer or edit questions, past contributions were retained and remain available to date.
Today, Socratic has mostly eased off from being a web-based platform to an app-based one. It is available on Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
Students can take a photo of a written or printed problem and the app uses OCR to recognize the characters and provide relevant answers. This feature was added to Google Lens.
12. Stack Overflow
Category: Software Development
Founded in 2008, Stack Overflow is the number one Q&A website for developers. It is an open forum where users can get direct answers on difficult coding questions and share tips with peers.
Questions, answers and Stack Overflow’s users are subjected to a reputation award system that makes the website self-moderating.
The platform is used by over 50 million developers around the world. Its industry reach is so extensive that it has become a popular hunting ground for recruiters looking for programmers. Stack Overflow was launched as a subsidiary of Stack Exchange, a network of Q&A websites.
13. Superuser
Category: Computer Hardware and Software
Superuser was launched in 2009 as one of the Q&A sites that are part of the Stack Exchange network. It fields questions and answers from power users i.e. sophisticated users of computers and programs that utilize more advanced features than the average user.
The platform aspires to create an extensive library of user-generated questions and answers on computer software and hardware.
Using a user voting system, the answer that gets the most votes rises to the top. The asker can mark any of the answers as accepted even if it is different from the one that received the highest number of votes.
14. Stack Exchange Subsites
Category: General
Stack Exchange is the head of a network of community-run Q&A websites and subsites. Its best known websites are Stack Overflow, Superuser, Server Fault and Ask Ubuntu.
However, it also has more than 170 subsites covering topics across a wide spectrum within and outside information technology.
Its most popular subsites include Mathematics, Arqade (for gaming), Ask Different (for Apple power users) and English Language & Usage. All Stack Exchange sub-sites follow the same format as Stack Overflow and are self-moderating.
15. Wonderopolis
Category: Educational
Created in 2010, Wonderopolis is an educational Q&A website founded and sponsored by the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL), a nonprofit. It provides learning resources for kids and can be used in the classroom and at home.
Users (not necessarily members) submit questions. Those selected by the editorial team are researched, investigated, answered and published in a detailed article format that includes images and/or video.
Wikipedia-like references are provided for each article so readers can further explore the topic if they want to.
Conclusion
The concept of Q&A websites goes as far back as the early days of the Internet with Answers.com and Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) as key trailblazers.
The Internet itself grew as a convenient tool for exchanging information. Search engines have their roots in providing the best web pages in response to user queries.
In fact, Q&A sites were the predecessors to social media as we know it today.
Unlike search engines though, Q&A sites aim to provide direct, concise answers with a degree of specificity that is hard to achieve with search engine results.
Q&A websites remain relevant with many now exploring AI to further enhance the quality of their information.
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