Way back in 2007, I had the pleasure of meeting this week’s Featured Contributor – who also happens to head up our Community Outreach Program and the infamous WAmmys: It’s Robin!

Although our meeting was under unfortunate circumstances, our friendship has blossomed over the years. In fact, she has become someone very near and dear to my heart. And if you poll the pool of awesome people using the site today, you’ll find that she has had this effect across the Answers.com community – making casual contributors feel welcomed, bonding with dedicated Supervisors and inspiring members of her own CO program each and every day. She’s a singin’ sparrow; a gifted goose; and most importantly, a rockin’ Robin!

And this is why we love her!

Read on… (and check out her first Contributor Corner interview from 2008)

What is your user name on Answers.com?

My user name is simply my name; Robin. If you can’t remember it, just think of the bird. On second thought, I’ve had people do that quite often in my lifetime; I’ve been called Wren, Sparrow, and several others, including Goose and Chicken. I’ve also been called Rockin’ Robin all my life. So maybe you should just think of the song if you can’t remember my user name.

How did you first learn about the site? When?

In March of 2007, I was looking for the answer to a question about a car for my Dad when I found FAQ Farm. Five months later, my youngest brother Ryan, who was suffering from depression, attempted suicide and survived, after having brain surgery and losing his eyesight in one eye. A few weeks later, I was going through my favorites and ended up back on the site, which was by then WikiAnswers. The first question I saw was “When you shoot yourself in the head do you feel pain?” I may not have stopped if it hadn’t been for that question. The question was locked, and I had some things I wanted to add to the answer. It said to email Crystal if you’d like a question unlocked, so I did. That’s how I met Crystal. It took a few months for me to become familiar with the site, but I eventually became an addicted Supervisor. Less than a year later, I was fortunate enough to become an employee of Answers.com and the rest is history, as they say.

It breaks my heart to say my baby brother succeeded at committing suicide in August of 2009 at the age of 31. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him and think of him, and remember that he is actually the reason I am with Answers.com now. He was aware of that, and even said once, “Maybe that was my purpose in life.” But I prefer to think his real purpose was to be the wonderful daddy he was to his three little boys, two of which are twins, and the precious son and brother he was. I’m so thankful for the time we had to love him and feel peace in knowing he is in a better place and no longer suffers from the terrible disorder they call depression. I feel it would be doing Ryan a disservice to tell the story of how I found WikiAnswers without mentioning him.

What is your role on Answers.com and what does it entail?

My role… oh my goodness. Let’s make that role(s). lol My primary role at Answers.com is being the Community Outreach Program Coordinator. I work with the volunteer program members called ‘WikiGuides’ to help maintain a warm and friendly environment in the community by performing various community actions including greeting new contributors and spreading well-wishes on special occasions. Just think of us as the Welcome Wagon Who Never Quits. Lol I also play the role of Supervisor interviewer for our No Stupid Answers blog posts for “Contributor Corner” written by Crystal and the supervisor profiles in the Supervisors Newsletter previously written by yours truly. I’m a Community Assistant, Mentor, Supervisor in lots of Food and Cooking Categories as well as Motorola Droid, and Kentucky categories and Platinum Contributor. I’m on the Community Development Team lead by our awesome Scott Moore and the MECOVA Team lead by our amazing Crystal. We all work together daily to help keep the site running smoothly and our community clean, healthy and happy. I am now the WAmmy Godmother for the first time and must say I thoroughly enjoy waving my magic wand and granting awards to our wonderful contributors. The WAmmy awards are given to supervisors and contributors who are voted for and elected by our Supervisors as the Best of the Best of Answers.com|WikiAnswers. Next year, the entire community will be involved in the WAmmy’s, and I am so excited about that! More nominations, more nominees, more voters, more FUN!

What is your favorite activity on the site? Least favorite?

This one is very hard to answer! I tend to get involved in an activity and stay involved until I somehow oscillate to another. At the present, I’m really having fun polishing and shining new unanswered questions to feature on our home page. I like to feature a variety of question types to catch the eyes of a variety of contributors. I feature science questions for those who love science, math questions for “Math-heads,” simple easy-to-answer questions to attract cruisers who may otherwise keep on cruising, book questions for readers…you get the picture. I enjoy working in my cooking categories because I love all things to do with food and cooking. I absolutely love getting into a question with a gazillion alternates and digging out the “pearls,” polishing them up and setting them out in the sun to shine with all the other deserving questions. I am very OCD about alternates and merges – if they are the slightest bit different, even if they could have the very same answer, they don’t belong in the alternates. I feel as if I’m treasure hunting when I’m in the alternates. I always check the 2nd tier for gems, too. And only leave the best quality questions in the top tier. My least favorite activity…hmmm…uh…it doesn’t exist. There’s nothing I don’t love to do on WikiAnswers! My problem is finding the time to do them all!

Do you have a favorite category? Most despised category?

Oh, my favorite category is definitely Food and Cooking. When I first became a Supervisor, there were way less sub-cats in Food and Cooking and all were taken, so I went to my next favorite which was Literature and Language, particularly the English categories, as I am an English major. When the new sub-cats began popping up in Food and Cooking, and I saw that Lit and Language was in good hands, I moved out of the classroom and into the kitchen, so to speak. My most despised category would be Religion and Spirituality, because it is such a controversial subject and I believe spirituality is a very personal thing and shouldn’t be bashed around. Just because I believe purple is the most beautiful color and you believe red is the most beautiful color, doesn’t mean I am right and you are wrong. Yes, Religion and Spirituality is one category I rarely wander into.

Aside from Answers.com, what do you like to do for fun? Hobbies?

I’ve played piano since 5th grade. I haven’t had a nice piano in years, and now have arthritis, so I’m not sure I could play as well as I used to. I did have an old honky-tonk piano someone gave me, but I couldn’t stand that hollow sound those pianos make so I got rid of it. I’d love to have a nice, newer piano. I also love to crochet, embroider, or cross-stitch when I have the time, which really isn’t that often anymore. And I love to read! I pretty much have a library in my office and I collect certain authors. I have periods of watching television in the evening for months, and then I switch to reading in the evenings for months. Right now, I’m on a TV kick. I also love to car travel, which I don’t do as often as I did when I was younger, but the love of seeing different places is still there and I’ll always in my heart be on Some-beach Some-where.

Name one thing not many people know about you.

I once worked for a beauty pageant called Southern Belle Productions and was “discovered” on stage by a pageant judge who was also the President of the Modeling Association of America. After the pageant, she was bombarded by girls and mothers who wanted their girls to be “discovered.” I was on stage and noticed her beckoning me so I went down and made my way through the crowd to get to her. She told me she thought I was “striking” and should be a plus-size model. We exchanged contact information and she pursued me for a year, calling me nearly every day and constantly mailing me information and requests. We finally had a meeting in Louisville, KY, and I was actually considering becoming a model until she told me I’d have to move to New York City. Unwilling to leave my family and friends, I turned her down. My favorite poem is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, and this is one of those crossroads I will always wonder about. Where would I be right now if I had taken the other road? I like to think I’d be a wealthy old woman living in Ireland in a castle!

If someone rented a billboard for you, what would you put on it?

On my billboard, in huge letters, I would put the word “KARMA.” I would surround that word with the following: You reap what you sow. You get what you deserve. What goes around comes around. It comes back to you like a boomerang. You get what you give. The full circle starts at your front and comes around to stab you in the back or pat you in the back; it’s up to you. What you cast out on the waters is what comes back with the tide. Others will do unto you what you do unto them. Give and you will receive. Take and you will be taken from. You determine your own future with your present deeds. It’s all up to you.

Name 3 things you think will become obsolete in ten years.

#1. The huge desktop computers. #2. The mail man. #3. Wires and cords. — Maybe not within ten years, but I believe my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will say, “I remember my Nanny said when she was a girl. They had things called telephones that were hooked up with a wire and a man delivered your mail by hand from a place called the Post Office. Everything had to be plugged into the wall with cords. And computers were so big they took up an entire desktop. Can you imagine living in those days?”

Any final words about the site? Your role? The community?

I am so happy to be here at Answers.com! I’m forever grateful to Chris Whitten for bringing his vision into existence, his dream to life and for passing the torch to Answers.com. I’m thankful to our amazing CEO Bob Rosenschein for seeing the potential and running with that torch; opening up the community and allowing us to participate in bringing Answers.com|WikiAnswers to where we are now. And most of all, I take great pride in being a part of the community that made it all happen and to the community for allowing me to be that part. I believe we’re still in the beginning stages and the thought of what we, the community, can do in the future and the success we will achieve is staggering. My dad always said you can break one stick, but if you put a whole bunch of sticks together, you can’t break ‘em. That’s how I see our community, my Answers.com family. Unbreakable and unstoppable. Onward and Upward!!! Here’s a question for you: Who first said onward and upward?

Do you want to be interviewed for the Contributor corner? Just leave a comment below and we’ll get to work.