Yahoo! Answers

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**Yahoo! Answers**


URL	http://answers.yahoo.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Collaboration
Registration	Yes
Available language(s):	English, Spanish, French ,German, Italian, Portuguese ,Chinese, Japanese
Owner	Yahoo!
Created by	Yahoo!
Launched	December 13, 2005
Current status	Active

Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven knowledge market website launched by Yahoo! on December 13, 2005 that allows users to ask and answer questions posed by other users. The site gives members the chance to earn points as a way to encourage participation. As of November 2006, it contains 65 million answers and more than 7 million questions.

Virtually any question is allowed, except ones that violate the Yahoo! Answers community guidelines. To encourage good answers, helpful participants are occasionally featured on the Yahoo! 360° blog page. Though the service itself is free, the content of answers are owned by the respective users—while Yahoo! maintains a non-exclusive royalty-free worldwide right to publish the information.^[1]

In order to open an account a user needs a Yahoo! ID, but can use any name as identification on Yahoo! Answers, one can also be represented by a Yahoo! avatar or a Yahoo! 360° picture. When answering a question, a pull-down menu allows one to choose to search either Yahoo! or Wikipedia.

The site is based in the United States and International: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom. The site is available in the United States in both US English and US Spanish. The user's default language on Yahoo! is their default language on Answers. Users can also opt to only view questions on their native country's site.

1 Point and levels system
2 Competitors
3 Criticism
4 Featured users
5 Special Guests
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Point and levels system

Questions are intially open for three days to answer. However the asker can choose to close the question after four hours or extend it for a period of up to eight days. To ask a question one has to have a Yahoo! account with a positive score balance.

New users are given 100 points upon opening a Yahoo! Answers account. Two points are awarded for every answer given, one point for every vote on unresolved questions, ten points if the user's answer is chosen as best answer, and three points for hand-selecting a best answer to one's own question. Five points are deducted when a user asks a question, two points if they delete an answer, or ten points if they get reported.[1] Ten points are deducted when an inappropriate question is asked and subsequently removed.

The points system is weighted to encourage users to answer questions and to limit spam questions. There are also levels (with point thresholds) which give more site access. [2]

Level / points table

1–249
250–999
1,000–2,499
2,500–4,999
5,000–9,999
10,000–24,999
25,000+

[edit] Competitors

The Answers.com site now also incorporates the FAQ-Farm website, now under the name of WikiAnswers - this in itself is similar to the much larger Yahoo! Answers, in that a question is asked, and a database 'grows from the seed' until either the original question is fully answered, or a home-grown databank of information exists (hence the 'wiki' prefix).

[edit] Criticism

[edit] Level and content of questions

Many users submit questions without searching in the archive, resulting in a large quantity of duplicate questions. Even fewer questioners use a search engine to try to find information themselves. Users often react to obvious questions by copy-and-pasting text from websites including Wikipedia. This is so common the term "Wikipasting" has been coined by users. Also, the answers are appearing in Yahoo!'s own search query results. These often include questions that only received one inane answer.

Most questions get answers only in the first few hours, when they appear on the list of recent questions. Occasionally, some older questions are answered after being "featured" or shown on the Yahoo! Answers home page.

There is little means to differentiate between hard and easy-to-answer questions, as the number of points awarded for a correct answer is fixed, unlike on sites such as Experts Exchange. Also, unlike on EE, there is no concept of "point splitting," i.e., only a single answer may be chosen as "best." This implies a design mindset that neglects situations where two answers could address different facets of a problem or where one user's answer could build on the insight of another's.

There are questions' where "best answer" is chosen naively. Some askers will not read through all of the answers. In the event that the asker does not choose a best answer, voters will on occasion choose the first answer as the "best answer" regardless of the response - since users earn 1 point for voting for a best answer.

[edit] Abuse system

Questions and answers can be reported by users as a breach of the guidelines. Yahoo! maintains that a customer care representative reviews each abuse report submitted by users.^[2]

Often, when users ask a question or give an answer, people who disagree will purposely lower the ratings of the person, even though the rating system is not meant to evaluate the content of the question. For example, if a question is posted about evolution, a creationist user can lower an evolutionary biology responder's rating by giving the answer a thumbs-down, even if the answer itself was well thought out. The same can be done to a creationist by an evolutionary biologist.

Another problem is that many users use the program to advertise their products or offers, sometimes inappropriate for younger users. Others use it to stalk people or get private information from those gullible enough to give it away.

Yet another problem is that certain users who dislike or disagree with a question, choose to file a complaint of abuse for the question. Some also get their friends to file a series of complaints about that question. Once a number of complaints have been reached, the question is then deleted by the Yahoo! team. As a result, many sensible and meaningful questions have been deleted while many nonsensical questions have been retained. Appealing towards the Yahoo! Answers team has limited success as there is often no response and sometimes, some members of the team are rather rude towards the users. And quite often, not only is the question deleted but all of the user's Yahoo! accounts are deleted too, without any given reason.

As of March 15, 2007, Yahoo! has merged with the photo sharing site Flickr, and both use the same Yahoo! Account ID. So if a user's Yahoo! Account is suspended, then they are unable to access the Flickr site that uses that same Account ID. Even if they are paying for a pro account nor have violated the terms of Flickr, they still will be denied access.

It is also not uncommon to see answers that directly insult the questioner or the questioner's beliefs. Often these prejudiced answers have nothing to do with the question, or do but have an unnecessary mean streak that may offend the user. This is not restricted to answers, and sometimes questions are meant to be hurtful and demeaning.

These claims are disputed by many Yahoo! Answers users due to abuse reports that are clearly miscategorized or not in violation of the terms of service (TOS).

In addition, some users create more than one user and reward points only between their two accounts.

[edit] Homework cheating

It's common for users to post entire questions from their coursework at both the high school and college level. These questions are sometimes ignored, but often elicit helpful and complete replies. To date, there are no reports of students being suspended or expelled for the obvious Honor Code violations involved in such blatant cheating. Little is known about how many of the answers derived from Yahoo! Answers are subsequently turned in as part of an assignment, or how such work is graded.

[edit] Games

Some groups have formed to deliberately abuse Yahoo! Answers. For example, the Distorted View Podcast has a running contest to see who can post the most absurd and offensive answers and questions without being deleted. Several of the Podcast's listeners have had their Yahoo! accounts deleted or suspended as a result of their postings.

Informal groups have formed to deliberately abuse those who use Yahoo! Answers to cheat on their homework. The goal is to post believable, yet completely false answers, thus rendering any information gleaned from Yahoo! Answers useless. The hope is that anyone using Yahoo! Answers to cheat will receive a failing grade.

[edit] Featured users

From time to time, the Yahoo! Answers team selects a user from the millions who use the feature and writes a blog about him/her in the Yahoo! Answers Blog. This is called the Featured User section. The blog usually talks about the user's activity on the website, as well as a little bit about the user's hobbies.

When a user is selected as a Featured User, he/she is sent an e-mail, asking for some details like hobbies, interests, occupation, etc. The user is usually expected to give a few comments on Yahoo! Answers as well. The user is expected to reply to the message appropriately, and the blog is put up in a few weeks.

The Blog is on the Yahoo! 360° service.

[edit] Special Guests

Names of celebrities have appeared on the site to ask questions for or answer questions from Yahoo! users. These names are marked by an "official" tag on the user's profile to make it appear that the celebrity is using the service.

In a promotion known as Ask the Planet that started when Yahoo! Answers ended its beta stage, the site selected a few of the top answerers and allowed them to ask questions to the entire Yahoo! Answers community, and every day, one answerer was picked to win a prize. It included questions by well-recognized celebrities and intellectuals, such as Marilyn vos Savant, the Guinness record holder for highest IQ.

Other celebrity names that have appeared on the site: