For the last 7 moths I have used Aardvark. With few exceptions, this services has disappointed me. I find when I ask a question I get one of two results. Result one: I get an answer that is the first hit off a google search. Such a reply doesn’t give me any information that I didn’t already have access to. Result two: I get an answer that is hardly related to the question I asked. Its as if the responder only took a glance at the question tag and with only that information answered the question.   

For example, today I asked a question on where to go for a good suit alteration. I don’t  live in a huge city, and I didn’t expect a bunch of responses or even one, necessarily. But what I was clear on was that I didn’t need a place that could barely hem a pair of pants. Rather I inquired about a a professional that could do major alterations to a suit. But like clockwork the responses were something to the effect of “if you want just basic stuff done go to X or Y” or “I know Men’s Warehouse does alterations, but they were not that great.”

What went wrong:

Everyone likes to feel smart, and Aardvark would like you to feel smart, so it encourages expertise either by tagging a variety of subject matters. Furthermore there is no constraints on asking a question. As a result Aardvark has setup a system that encourages low value information exchanges. 

How to make this better:

One way to make this better would be to change how they encourage users to respond to questions. Instead of encouraging users to respond to any question that they have an inkling about, Aardvark should funnel questions to users that have have some experiential knowledge or some personal insight on the topic. Otherwise Aardvark is just a very lame reincarnation of Google Search, and the site looses what made it good:people with actual knowledge answering a question.