Does anyone know how many A's & how many Q's in total have been asked by the top 10 philosophy Answerers?

I look at this kind of thing from time to time myself. And though it sounds as if you already have a pretty good idea of the answer, what you probably don't have is a CHART: (I love charts)

_____________ P BA __ T A _ T Q _ Q/A _ BA%

Don H ............... 907 . 17710 ... 28 . 0.002 . 20

efw ................... 802 . 10344 . .129 . 0.013 . 24

Doctor Y ........... 725 ... 3258 ... 10 . 0.003 . 60

dlin333 .............. 546 ... 4755 ... 23 . 0.005 . 35

Way Out West .. 419 ..... 909 ... 31 . 0.034 . 87

sophist ............. 414 ... 8198 .... 35 . 0.004 . 11

godrealized ....... 394 ..... 903 ..... 0 . 0 ....... 73

Third P ............. 379 .... 2567 . 491 . 0.191 . 19

vasu063 ............ 358 ... 2540 ..... 3 . 0.001 . 57

Yaoi shonen-ai .. 345 ... 2073 ... 25 . 0.012 . 18

(P BA - best answers in philosophy category; T A - total of all answers anywhere; T Q - total of all questions anywhere; Q/A - ratio of questions asked to answers given; BA% - percentage of all answers that were best answers)

That, as far as I can tell, is exactly what you asked for. I don't know how to weight the best answer percentage because you didn't specify what you wanted to weight more heavily.

It bears mention that the 'top 10' list for the philosophy section is NOT ranked on points, as you can see, but ONLY on the basis of the number of best answers. If you answer a thousand times and only get one best answer, you've advanced as much in the rankings as someone who answers once and is chosen best for that answer. The 'top contributor' badge DOES have to do with BA% as well as frequency of participation... but that's a different thing altogether.

I can understand why you prefer best answer percentage to raw points. I try to cultivate a fairly high one myself. But in doing so (and watching others do so), I can tell you that there are plenty of things a person can do to rig the score, so it may not be a very good indicator to go by in judging others.

It's not difficult, for example, to always get best answer in any question that goes to voting if you just have a dozen accounts and vote for all your own answers. I'm sure you've seen some of the most flagrant examples of this yourself - someone getting 10 votes with an nonsensical answer or one identical to another answer that gets no votes. Many of the people in the above list are completely above this suspicion because they don't have enough points to have even voted for all their own answers! (That would be Don H, efw, sophist, Third P, and Yaoi, FYI)

Another way to get a comparatively high percentage is to do what I call 'bottom-feeding' (which I have to admit to being occasionally guilty of): lots of questions fail to get even one answer. If you track those down and answer them before the time limit, you are all but assured of being able to vote yourself best answer from sheer lack of competition. A lot of bottom-feeders fail to even maintain the fiction that they are after anything but points and post nonsense or insulting garbage.

More people do a kind of front-end selection... just not answering questions they don't think they can win. Sometimes it's not as overt as that - I don't answer if I don't think I have anything to add, for example. But I also tend to avoid askers who I know think differently from myself and are disinclined to appreciate my participation in any case. I think you and I are like that, Heeltap, which is why I don't generally answer your questions even though I've probably read most of them (no offense intended at all, by the way - what would be the fun of everyone thinking alike?).

What is a good thing to look at? You didn't exactly ask, but I'll tell you what I think anyway. I like to look at WHERE a person got their points. From the list above, for example, sophist got the most of his points (60%) from just answering questions. Vasu063 and I got the most (64 and 65%) from getting best answers. This suggests to me what a persons' focus is... some just like shooting out answers, some questions (I know you like to do this), some in many areas (Don H and vasu063 both got 75% of their bests in other categories) and some in just a few (Yaoi get 95% here, and Third P 76%... no one else is even close).

All of which, hopefully, you at least found interesting if not completely new. Peace!

Once I came up with a way to be selected as BA virtually 100% of the time. I proceeded to test this method by answering all sorts of Q's in every category at YA. Consequently, my BA ratio shot through the roof to over 90%.

ADDITION:

After mousing around in YA for a few months, I discovered that you can identify a list of questions which have not been answered in the alloted time, so they're about to expire unanswered. There are tons of them. It's possible to answer the Q virtually assured that your A will be the only one posted. I did this for several weeks just for the fun of it. It caused my BA% and overall points to shoot way up to 90%.

Since then, I've chosen to only answer questions in the philosophy section, and to only answer if I thought my A was worthy of being selected as BA. This has probably resulted in a 40%-50% BA ratio in philosophy recently.

I'm trying to ask more Qs (37 so far, but I deleted a few of those), but I find it hard to formulate something in my mind that I can't figure out the answer to myself.

I doubt whether someone keeps track of such things, but what i've noticed (at least in my case) is that the high number of Best Answers is more related to my length on YA, rather than being a good answerer on philosophy. I once asked Richard (one of the top all time answerers) how did he get such an ungodly high number. His response was basically the same as i've stated, he was on here longer than me.

As far as the ratio of Qs to As, mine is 129:10,339 with about 2479 Best Answers. If you want strictly the Philosophy A's and Q's, then that would be another ratio.,

I dunno heeltap, but i answer much more questions than i ask. I didn't even know what a top answerer was, they just stuck an orange sign above my name one day. It's all cos I've got too much time on my hands and use 'answers' as a study tool.

Have a look at my details for percentage of questions to answers.

Addendum,

Mine's on the list for UK and Ireland.