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Yahoo Answers

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Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven service that allows users to ask and answer questions posed by other users, in the style of answers.com and Google Answers. In order to ask a question or to answer one, one has to have a Yahoo! account.

This Yahoo! service has been popular among many Yahoo! users. Members may ask virtually any question except ones that violate the Yahoo! Answers community guidelines. To encourage good answers, Yahoo! Answers occasionally features helpful participants on its Yahoo! 360° blog page.

Point and Levels System

The site gives users the chance to gain points as a way to encourage particpation. 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 one point for putting a question to a vote. Five points are deducted when a user asks a question, two points if they delete an answer or if they get reported. The points system is weighted to encourage users to answer questions. There are also levels (with point thresholds) which give more site access. [1]

Criticism

Level and Content of Questions

Many questioners submit questions without searching in the archive. Even fewer questioners use a search engine to try to find information themselves. Users often react to obvious questions in copy-and-pasting text from websites including Wikipedia. Also, the answers are appearing in Yahoo's own search query results. These often include questions that only received one inane answer.

The high rate of new questions (about 20 per minute) leads to a chatroom-like feeling. Most questions get answers only in the first two minutes, when they appear on the list of recent questions. This is not always true though. After reaching a particular level a question can be "featured" or shown on the Yahoo! Answers home page.

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 in the system. [1]

Ask the Planet

Yahoo! Answers is having a promotion known as Ask the Planet. Ask the Planet started when Yahoo! Answers ended its beta stage. It picks the top answerers and allows them to ask questions to the entire Yahoo! Answers community, and every day, one answerer is picked to win a prize. It has included questions by featured people, such as Marilyn vos Savant, the Guiness record holder for highest IQ.

Celebrities on Yahoo! Answers

A number of celebrities have also been brought in to ask questions from Yahoo! users. These include:


Notes

  1. ^ Yahoo! Answers Help
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