Yahoo Answers rival ready to fight

Amazon's Askville service , which we reported on a test launch earlier , is officially open today. The new service, as its creators suggest, should compete with Yahoo Answers : Askville users can also ask any questions to the community absolutely free, and other users can answer them.

However, unlike other similar services, the answers to the questions will not be open for public viewing until the time allotted for the answers (7 days) is over. This feature is intended to eliminate duplicate answers. Each question can receive no more than 5 answers: the limit is set so as not to “overload” the person asking; if the received answers did not satisfy him, he can repeat the question.

In addition, members of the Askville community will earn points based on the quality of their answers on specific topics. Correctly answering a question marked with one or another tag, the user raises his rating in this area. For each incorrect answer, the rating will decrease.

Points for correct answers are converted into a special "currency" - Quest coins. It is assumed that it will be used on Questville , another Amazon service that will be launched in 2007.