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Yahoo! Answers

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Yahoo! Answers
File:Yahoo!Answers.gif
File:Yahoo Answers Home Page.jpg
Type of site
Collaboration
Available inEnglish, Spanish, French ,German, Italian, Portuguese ,Chinese, Japanese
OwnerYahoo!
Created byYahoo!
URLhttp://answers.yahoo.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationYes

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, New Zealand, Mexico, Philippines, Quebec, 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.

Point and levels system

Questions are initially open to answers for three days. However the asker can choose to close the question after a minimum of four hours or extend it for a period of up to seven 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, one point for receiving a thumbs up rating on their answer that has been chosen as best, and three points for selecting a best answer to one's own question. Having one's question resolved by a vote does not give the asker any points. He/she may vote on the unresolved question and receive a point for it as usual, but the asker's vote is only worth the same as any other voters. Three points are awarded to askers who select best answers to questions they have posed simply to act as an incentive to do so, i.e. to use one's own judgment todecide the best answer ti his/her question rather than putting the question to a general vote where voters have their own opinion on the answers. Five points are deducted when a user asks a question, two points if they delete an answer they posted, and ten points if a question or answer they posted is determined to be in violation of the Terms of Service or Community Guidleines.[3]

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. [4]

Level / points table

  1. 1–249
  2. 250–999
  3. 1,000–2,499
  4. 2,500–4,999
  5. 5,000–9,999
  6. 10,000–24,999
  7. 25,000+

Points are earned as per following Points Table:

Action Points
Begin participating on Yahoo! Answers One time: 100
Ask a question -5
Choose a best answer for your question 3
No Best Answer was selected by voters on your question Points Returned: 5
Answer a question 2
Deleting an answer -2
Log in to Yahoo! Answers Once daily: 1
Vote for a best answer 1
Vote for No best answer 0
Have your answer selected as the best answer 10
Receive a "thumbs-up" rating on a best answer that you wrote (up to 50 thumbs-up are counted) 1 per "thumbs-up"

Criticisms

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 has become so common that 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.

Yahoo! Answer inexplicably only shows related questions to the questions being typed but not search engine results from the Yahoo! search engine which could just as easily be shown and mostly likely provide an existing appropriate answer via another website.

Although a question may be answered immediately, often the answer is trite or unrelated. If the question appears to challenge some person or organisation's philosophy or ideology, it is often answered with multiple insults, sometimes in the form of questions themselves about the questioner's own ideology.

Points are rewarded for any answer posted, including mere insults, unrelated answers, inappropriate jokes, unhelpful questions, nonsensical statements, and answers not meant to be answered by certain groups as is indicated by the question.

There is no doubt that the rewarding of points for any type of answers has lead to community members posting answers not to help answer the question but as a quick way of boosting their Yahoo! Answers score.

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.

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.


Complaint 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] This claim is disputed by many Yahoo! Answers users due to stated reasons of violations that are clearly inaccurate and deletions of posts that are not in violation of the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS) or the Yahoo! Answers Community Guidelines.


One common criticism is that it is easy to get a question or answer removed that is not in violation of Yahoo!'s Community Guidelines. Allegedly the more people that rate a posting as abusive the more likely it is to be removed. Some users maintain that questions are automatically deleted when a certain number of complaints are received, although the Answers Team states that this is not the case.[3] The Yahoo! Answers Team does provide a process by which users can appeal deletions of questions and answers[4], but many users are not satisfied that appeals are adequately addressed.


It's claimed that moderators fail to remove questions which are not serious questions, but rather insults or criticisms directed against adherents of a given religion, typically Islam or Christianity. (Citation needed) Other questions and answers are deleted to appease the feelings of specific interest groups, despite the fact that the questions and answers do not violate the terms of service.(Citation needed)


Another complaint is that the response to content posted on Answers that is determined to be abusive is not limited to Answers, but can, at Yahoo!'s discretion, result in deactivation of the Yahoo! ID associated with the offending Answers account. Many Answers users also use other Yahoo! services, and deactivation of their Yahoo! ID effects all Yahoo! services the user accesses under that ID. 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 and have not violated the terms of Flickr, they still will be denied access.


Another complaint is that user accounts on Yahoo! Answers are deactivated without warning which could end up causing the user to be cut off from his Yahoo! Answers network (which consists of various contacts including fans and friends). It's rare if ever, that Yahoo's customer care will respond to it's users or their complaints or get involved with their problems which is no doubt due to a lack of enough employees to handle the many complaints.


There have been several cases where users have tried to contact Yahoo! customer care over the phone when they don't receive any email response but find they are required to pay a fee for a response.[5]


In addition, some users create more than one account and award points only between their two accounts by asking questions with the puppet account, answering with the primary account, and selecting their own answer as the "best answer". This is known as point-gaming. Point-gaming also includes incidents where people post "have two points".


The Distorted View Podcast runs an informal "Sabotage Yahoo Answers" contest where the goal is to post the "Most extreme and unbelievable" questions and answers[6]. At least four Distorted View fans have had their Yahoo accounts deleted as a result of these activities. The prevalence of this behavior is unknown, but an archive [7] of known "gag" questions and answers exists, usually containing profanity and obscene content.

Lack of Appropriate Staffing

Yahoo! Answers demonstrates by it's haphazard removal and approval of various questions and answers that it lacks either enough moderators or moderators with enough specialized knowledge to know when certain postings should be allowed to remain.

Homework helping

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 they often receive elicit helpful and complete replies. Thus far there have been no reports of students being penalized for the obvious Honor Code violations involved.

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.

Special Guests

Several celebrities and notables have appeared on Yahoo! Answers to Ask or Answer questions. These users have an "official" badge below their avatar and on their profile page. The list of Special Guests has included well-recognized celebrities and intellectuals, such as Marilyn vos Savant, the Guinness record holder for highest IQ and the President of India.

Some of other celebrities that have Asked and/or Answered questions on the site:

References

  1. ^ What is the copyright status of responses submitted to Yahoo! Answers? Can good info be moved to Wikipedia? from Yahoo! Answers.
  2. ^ Yahoo! Answers Help
  3. ^ [1]
  4. ^ [2]
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