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The site has also been criticized for lack of oversight on the banning of user accounts. [[Troll (Internet)|Trolls]] who create multiple accounts specifically target random users and click on the "Report It" button. All account suspensions are coordinated via Yahoo! Answers Customer Care clients, thus severity and frequency of violation notices may merit a permanent account suspension from the service or even the termination of their Yahoo! account.<ref>{{cite web | last = Marco | first = Meghann | title = Watch Your Mouth On Yahoo! Answers Or They'll Delete Your Email And Website | work = The Consumerist | date = 2007-04-12 | url = http://consumerist.com/consumer/yahoo/watch-your-mouth-on-yahoo-answers-or-theyll-delete-your-email-and-website-251871.php | accessdate = 2008-06-19}}</ref> More recently, Yahoo! Answers staff removed the Yahoo! Answers appeal board. Users are now required to email Customer
Even though members can be academic experts and researchers, Yahoo! Answers' target group and majority is primarily mainstream users; henceforth it has been criticized for both its high quantity of dubious questions as well as the [[reliability]], [[validity]], and [[relevance]] of its answers. The site has also been criticized for lack of oversight on the banning of user accounts. [[Troll (Internet)|Trolls]] who create multiple accounts specifically target random users and click on the "Report It" button. All account suspensions are coordinated via Yahoo! Answers Customer Care clients, thus severity and frequency of violation notices may merit a permanent account suspension from the service or even the termination of their Yahoo! account.<ref>{{cite web | last = Marco | first = Meghann | title = Watch Your Mouth On Yahoo! Answers Or They'll Delete Your Email And Website | work = The Consumerist | date = 2007-04-12 | url = http://consumerist.com/consumer/yahoo/watch-your-mouth-on-yahoo-answers-or-theyll-delete-your-email-and-website-251871.php | accessdate = 2008-06-19}}</ref> More recently, Yahoo! Answers staff removed the Yahoo! Answers appeal board. Users are now required to email Customer
Care directly to contest a recent violation or account suspension.
Care directly to contest a recent violation or account suspension.


Revision as of 20:25, 15 July 2008

Yahoo! Answers
File:Yahoo!Answers.gif
Screenshot
File:Y! Answers.png
Yahoo! Answers home page as of June 11, 2008.
Type of site
Collaboration
Available inEnglish, Chinese, French, German, Indonesia, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese
OwnerYahoo!
Created byYahoo!
URLanswers.yahoo.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationYes

Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven knowledge market website launched by Yahoo! on December 13, 2005 that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer asked questions from other users. The site gives members the chance to earn points as a way to encourage participation and is based on Naver's Knowledge iN. As of December 2006, it had 60 million users and 65 million answers. On June 11 2007, Yahoo!'s former questions and answers service, Ask Yahoo!, was formally merged with Yahoo! Answers.[1]. Yahoo Answers has become the second most popular Internet reference site after Wikipedia, according to Comscore.[2]

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.[3] Chat is explicitly forbidden in the Community Guidelines, although users may choose to reveal their Yahoo! Messenger ID on their Answers profile page.

In order to open an account a user needs a Yahoo! ID, but can use any name as identification on Yahoo! Answers. A user 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 all over the Internet.



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.

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] Aside from this, points and levels have no real world value, cannot be traded, and serve only to indicate how active a user has been on the site. A notable downside to the points/level side is that it encourages people to answer questions even when they do not have a suitable answer to give, in order to gain points. On the other hand, many people ask questions that do not gain them more knowledge.

The point system encourages users to answer as many questions as they possibly can, up to their daily limit. Once a user gets to level 3 or 4, if they are able to maintain a good 'best answer' percentage (above 10%) within a specific category they will receive an orange 'badge' under the name of their avatar naming them a "Top Contributor." A user can be a "Top Contributor" in up to three categories, listed on the user's profile page, which can change depending on the user's answering habits. However, once a user becomes a "Top Contributor" in any category, the badge appears in all answers, questions, and comments by the user regardless of category.

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"

Voting and rating with "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" is done anonymously, and once done cannot be changed. Users may tag an interesting question with a star, and the list of users who have so tagged a question is made public.[5] On Answers profile pages, users can track how many stars they have received for their questions. However, a user may un-star a question at will. In the event a question is deleted, any stars it had at the time of deletion are still credited to the askers account. Users may also keep a separate watchlist of questions that is kept private.


[[Image:Yahoo answers cup.JPG|thumhave been stickers, mugs, jackets, Yahoo! Answers bags, and water bottles. They commonly do this around their birthday in December.

There have been year subscription to magazine(s). Such promotions are often not widely advertised yet can be viewed using the Official Yahoo! Answers Team Blog.

Highlighting 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.

Yahoo! Answers also has a "Best of Answers" section, in which Yahoo! staff pick questions that have been answered with a particularly highly rated "best answer."

Answers On The Street

Beginning July 2, 2007, Yahoo! Answers began featuring weekly video segments called "Yahoo! Answers On The Street." Hosted by J. Keith van Straaten, the 3-4 minute videos draw on questions from the Answers community and mix together expert interviews with comedic man-on-the-street pieces. A new episode is posted every Monday, with previous episodes archived.

Criticism

The site has been criticized as being more about social networking than providing accurate information.[6] Even though members can be academic experts and researchers, Yahoo! Answers' target group and majority is primarily mainstream users; henceforth it has been criticized for both its high quantity of dubious questions as well as the reliability, validity, and relevance of its answers. The site has also been criticized for lack of oversight on the banning of user accounts. Trolls who create multiple accounts specifically target random users and click on the "Report It" button. All account suspensions are coordinated via Yahoo! Answers Customer Care clients, thus severity and frequency of violation notices may merit a permanent account suspension from the service or even the termination of their Yahoo! account.[7] More recently, Yahoo! Answers staff removed the Yahoo! Answers appeal board. Users are now required to email Customer Care directly to contest a recent violation or account suspension.

Community moderation

In September 2007, Yahoo! Answers staff replaced the traditional reporting system with community moderation, in which all users effectively moderate content within the forum. Based on the ability to accurately report content that violates the Yahoo! Answers community guidelines [8], users are assigned a reporting status as either trusted or untrusted. The higher the reporting power, the stronger this user's influence is concerning the removal of reported content. This had led to criticism that an 'automated' system has evolved in which trusted users can abuse community moderation to remove acceptable content that doesn't violate the rules.

Special guests

Several celebrities and notables have appeared on Yahoo! Answers to ask 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.

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

Further reading

  • Gomes, Lee (2006-07-13), "Got a question? Yahoo has an answer – kind of", The Wall Street Journal (reprint) {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  • Gomes, Lee (2006-08-23), "Portals: Success, greed in the new economy of web point payouts", The Wall Street Journal (reprint) {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

References

  1. ^ Yahoo Answers Birthday: One Year Old
  2. ^ Does Yahoo have the right answers? - September 1, 2006
  3. ^ What is the copyright status of responses submitted to Yahoo! Answers? Can good info be moved to Wikipedia? from Yahoo! Answers.
  4. ^ Yahoo! Answers - Point System
  5. ^ Yahoo! 360° - Yahoo! Answers Team Blog (answers.yahoo.com) - Seeing Stars?
  6. ^ Leibenluft, Jacob (2007-12-07). "A Librarian's Worst Nightmare: Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong". Slate.
  7. ^ Marco, Meghann (2007-04-12). "Watch Your Mouth On Yahoo! Answers Or They'll Delete Your Email And Website". The Consumerist. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
  8. ^ "Yahoo! Answers Community Guidelines".
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