Answers.mu, a copycat of CleverDodo.mu

The site in question lacks originality. It's using the widely available Wordpress platform with a WP-Answers-Black theme (available for $89) and a combination of other wordpress plugins to achieve the functionality that's inherent on Clever Dodo.

With that paid wordpress themes, there's the ability to pull questions on any topic from Yahoo Answers to give the impression that there are lots of active users on the site. Now it could well be that they have real users but I doubt that very much.

Users are only being active for the reward and it makes me wonder what is going to happen if he decides to stop giving out gifts to use his website and whether the gift to be given is going to meet the expectations of the users trying so hard to accumulate points.

I agree, I expect the reward system to backfire on the admin guy. It will turn out to be kid's stuff.

That's what I wanted to avoid in the first place with Clever Dodo - I wanted people to post genuine questions, something they needed help with and have the community users answer them as much as they can.

When people start talking nonsense, the credibility of the website goes down and it becomes a polluted environment where nobody really wants to hang out.

Maybe you should come back among us Mauritians first? Eh?

Timezone is not a priority and can be updated in minutes. Your comment about being in Mauritius is irrelevant.

@dontyoucry: And you sound just like the pathetic guy who’s enjoying his best friend’s love right in front of him ;) you should probably get a life mate, granted cleverdodo is not perfect, I have a hard time to login too, but when you are a copycat you just go about doing what others are doing so there is no need at all for you to come up with new/good ideas, once you’ve seen the flaws in the original one, obviously you’ll want to change those in yours, right? I couldn’t help laughing when I was reading your comments (I should probably thank you too, I was falling right asleep on my laptop until I saw this ;)) So what’s your contribution to the Mauritian society? :P When I saw the time zone comment the only thing that came to my mind was ‘Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and beat you down with experience’ :) You made my night :)

It's a copycat definitely. Clever dodo was launched before (April 2011, check whois info).

- you can login from every page here (don't really understand your point). However i know the login process is not straightforward at the moment but that will soon change (you'll even have the option of logging through facebook)
- questions by categories has already been finalised on cleverdodo but it's not available yet. Answers.mu has only 3 categories...
- top answers/latest answers (can easily be implemented but now is not necessarily the time to do that)
- where did you find a larger community there? are you talking about the 5 regular people who are asking questions and answering in the hope that they will get a gift?

Answers.mu is run on wordpress a free software with the Q&A theme bought at $89 (see my previous comments) while Clever Dodo has been designed from the scratch using C#. We have our own mascot, our own design, user limits and rules, and the site has been localised for different languages (english, french, creole)...please take the time to browse through cleverdodo.mu properly and then you can compare :)

May be copycat but still have more features than cleverdodo.
I know, it's an inconvenient truth.

You don't understand my point? Well, I'll explain;
At answers.mu, you can type your username and password to login right from any page.
In cleverdodo, however, you have to click a link first, which will bring you to a login page, takes more steps; enter captcha first, then password, THEN it'll log you in but it'll bring you to your account page rather than the page you were viewing. So you have to click the back button multiple times to get back to the page and finally, hit the reload button.

There are a few other things, but well, I doubt you like constructive criticism.

@thesithlord: You're an old user of clever dodo and I thought you would know better. I've got a list of features that I'm working on for clever dodo and it takes time because they need to be tested properly before I make them live (hint: we don't use already made templates here, we build all functionality from scratch). I'm also restricted by the amount of time I can devote to this project.

I am aware that the login process is annoying and like I said in my previous comment, this is going to be the next update that will be rolling out (max 2 weeks' time).

I welcome constructive criticism but I cannot please everyone with all the feature requests that I get (I do not do them on a first come, first serve basis but rather on a priority queue).

So keep on sending what improvements you'd like to see and I'll work on them as soon as I possibly can.

Here's the difference between you and and the guy over @ answers.mu. As soon as the community over there asked him to implement something, he did it right away. I've been following him, so I know. Stuff like the ability to delete your own question, posting answers to your own question, preventing to select one's own answer as best answer. He's also implemented a private messaging system, shows you recent answers, top-rated answers, users get email notifications whenever there's a new question and they can manage their own subscriptions. These are just off the top of my head and all of these do not come bundled with the software.

He's also changed the whole concept. Top users don't get gifts anymore but rather every once in a while a riddle is set which users have to solve in order to win the prize. New questions will also be moderated from what I've read in his recent newsletter. Means less crappy questions. :)

In just under 3 weeks his site has reached 127th in Mauritius according to Alexa (alexa.com/siteinfo/answers.mu) whereas you rank in at 1025 (alexa.com/siteinfo/cleverdodo.mu). There's just no comparison.

People can also send links in answers over there. They don't have to contribute a lot before being able to do that. Funny you should talk about bribery. Lol. You even go as far as giving your users moderation tools when they contribute more on your site. How hypocritical then to criticise they guy for his similar marketing technique. Anyway...

Oh and finally I don't think he ever claimed to be the first Q&A site in Mauritius, so what are you whining about? You sound like a bitter old man who's just lost his love to his best friend. Get over it mate. :)

Oh and he's paying for dedicated hosting, .mu domain name, and giving away gifts from hiw own pocket. He doesn't even put google ads on his website. Yet you find there is something to criticise in that? Typical Mauritian behaviour! Nanyen zamais pa bon pou zot na? Au lieu zot p assiz derriere zot computer zot p critiquer, au moins fer ene zafer pou lezot dans zot la vie. Ek zot kas. Mo ti bien envi gete komie kav fer li.

Sounds to me like you're the 'guy over at answers.mu' (Confirmed : you're the guy!).

Anyway, I've said it multiple times and I'll say it again - it's easy to implement features when most things have already been done for you. The core of his system runs on wordpress and his theme has been bought (most functionality on his website is already built in). Here everything is being built from the grounds up.

He's changed the concept you said and you don't find that strange? He promised to give gifts to his top user every month and now he's abandoned the idea. What a cheat! What's the point in publishing a story in the newspaper telling people to use his website to get gifts and not adhering to it?

Alexa rank is very inaccurate for starters but if he's getting lots of people to his site, then good for him.

You do not understand the concept of Clever Dodo, so let me make it clear to you. The site is designed to be run by its community members and not by a single person. It's the community that makes the site so it makes sense to give them access to moderation tools when they reach a certain stage. Now that's not paying users (I mean giving gifts) to use the site. It's completely different...

The story published in Le Matinal implied that his site was the first Q&A website and when I sent a comment to say it wasn't, the comment was not even published. Why? Because he works there as the webmaster and no wonder he didn't want people to know Clever Dodo exists :)

And for your last comment - all the things you said about hosting, no ads, doing something for the mauritian community etc, Clever Dodo came up with that idea first again :)

Exactly. It's called the 'first mover advantage'.

Become big fast or else you'll fall before even having started.