Does Yahoo Answers confirm or disprove John Gabriel's Greater Internet F***wad Theory?

Question

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Are YA users more often jerks and idiots or kind and helpful?

Answer 1

LOL, I think it depends on your own manner as a questioner a lot of the time. But there are many nasty people around thats for sure. Lots of nice ones too.

Answer 2

A certain number of people in any crowd are idiots -- same here.  But most sincere questions here get sincere answers. So Gabriel's theory doesn't hold for the majority of people here -- just the minority of idiots.

Answer 3

disprove for the most part. even though alot of the time peoples statistics and thoughts come out of their asses, they are still trying to help. people in general have powerful self-government. a person is smart but people are stupid

Answer 4

Gabe's theory is an interesting one that was used to apply to gaming, so the circumstances behind YA are substantially different such that I don't think that you can compare the two.  

However, I think that the anonymity of the internet allows people to be more honest, rather than follow conventions of polite company.  That's probably why the site is popular.  Rather than people telling you what you want to hear, people on Answers say what they really think.

-Safety Monkey (ca. early PA years)