Talk:Yahoo! Answers

POV?

Is it just me, or do the "moderator bias" and "vandalism and trolling" sections seem POV? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.200.72.117 (talk) 04:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Troll section

I have deleted this because this kind of content should be here. It was just created for the vanity of a few idiots..and I think the editors here should make sure it stays out..It serves no purpose81.145.242.85 12:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Baconmasters???

What is "Baconmasters", and who is the leader? A search on both Wikipedia turned up NOTHING useful, except this article. This link should either be removed or redirected, because I don't see anyone creating a "baconmaster" Wikipedia article anytime soon. Or we could just find his Yahoo Answers profile, like some of the other askers. I looked, but couldn't find it.Littlebum2002 15:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Local topics

Does anybody else think that Yahoo Answers should have a seperate category for local questions?

I often have to go to travel or dining to ask questiong from somebody from my own city.

Is there a better way to ask a local question from users in your area?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nadyes (talk • contribs) 08:42, 20 March 2007 (UTC).

Hi Nadyes, thanks for the product suggestion. I'll take it back to the team. - Micah Alpern, Answers Design Lead. Malpern 18:35, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

The site was built and is moderated from India

This is one of the reasons that the abuse system has so many problems. A lot is lost in translation between here & india. I can't find the sources that explain that it was built in india, but several developers told me this ... Yahoo is a public company, so i'm sure it's not hidden information. if anyone can find this, i think it is worth adding to the article. thanks.

• • • Malpern 04.22.07: - My name is Micah Alpern [1] and I'm the design lead for Yahoo! Answers. I'm afraid this isn't accurate. The bulk of the Yahoo! Answers team is in the United States. We do have some developers and researchers in Canada and the United Kingdom, but the majority of the design and development team is in Santa Clara, CA. The code this team developers is deployed to 16 countries including India. Here's a link to the announcement of the Y! Answers one year anniversary party [2], which happened in California so that local Yahoo!'s could party with the team. There are local teams working on local versions of Y! Answers in a number of South East Asian countries (including Tawain and Hong Kong), but the vast majority of development occurs in California.

• • • • Ok. So, it was developed here... but notice how you completely avoided the issue of where it is MODERATED from? The entire problem with yahoo answers is the endless banning that goes on for no substantiated reason. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelatomato (talk • contribs) 08:41, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense

This Yahoo! service has been found to be very addictive by many Yahoo! users. The main reason for this being the interactive environment and the lack of emotional bond between the Yahoo! Answers Team and the participants.

A change

I have just changed a few things that aren't correct. --Mr.Nobody 03:30, 7 June 2006 (UTC)Mr. Nobody

Is this fair

My account on Yahoo! Answers got suspended because it said a question of mine was not a question or answer when it was and even though it was a chatting question it was in the category Entertainment and Music < Polls and Surveys.

Here is the notice.

Oops

Your account has been suspended.

If you feel there has been a mistake, please contact us at answers-abuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com.

Most likely, your account was suspended in violation of Yahoo! Answers community guidelines. Click here to read the full guidelines

In the meantime, feel free to browse Yahoo! Answers

Back to Home My Q&A

--Mr.Nobody 21:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Mr. Nobody

It's run by a load of morons but I don't think we should be discussing this here. This is a talk page to talk about the actual article not a forum for Yahoo! Answers. MrBobla 15:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Presentation

This article is not properly presented. Kothari.sagar 12:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Expiration

How long before the questions expire? 66.27.239.235 18:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

The questioner can pick best answer after 4 hours or wait up to a week until it is put to vote Oxyman42 22:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

date of launch

When did yahoo launch this service?Oxyman42 22:40, 4 September 2006 (UTC) December 2005 Maniac 01:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

December 13th, 2005. Maniac 01:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

abuse system

So I posted the flaws in the abuse system as noted above by someone else under the "Is this fair?" heading, along with examples. The examples were removed by one user as "irrelevant". Then the flaws were removed as being "point of view" because the examples that I listed as proof were previously removed (see below)

   * Abuse System

Yahoo answers appears to have major problems with their abuse system. Yahoo apparently does not manually review abuse reports, nor does their appeal process utilize live humans. The Yahoo server apparently generates an abuse report based solely on reports from users. Therefore, trolls and pranksters can make false reports which will inevitably get an account suspended.

Here are some examples:

Question: I'm in LOVE with this video clip. My only question is if it's 100% real. What do you guys think? Details of Violation: I'm sure it is. Looks like a mocking bird Reason of Violation:Spam, Phishing, or Fraud

Question: is it wrong to judge a guy for his appearance or is it too shallow? Details of Violation: It really depends on how you choose to live your life. Many people would consider it judgemental and shallow, but you have to decide if you're ok with doing that. Reason of Violation:Spam, Phishing, or Fraud

The fact is, the evidence above, along with plenty more examples from other Yahoo users shows that Yahoo does NOT have a customer service agent review each abuse claim.

On the exposure of questions

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.

The above paragraph in the article does not take into account a very useful feature on Yahoo! Answers: sorting. You can use a link on the questions list to sort by number of answers in ascending order. That way you can get at the Q's that have been addressed the least and answer them (although you do run into a few that have no answers because they were deleted). If question-answerers on Yahoo! Answers use this feature regularly (and I suspect some do), it's probably not fair to make this unqualified statement about question exposure. Alksub 02:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah it is not always true, but in my experience with Answers, unless a question is in a popular category or about a popular item, it gets the majority, if not all of the answers within the hour. I think that this generalization is correct. Akkid89

Celebrities

Are these actual famous people or just other users pretending to be them? Elle Bee 19:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Probably people pretending to be them. Somebody is pretending to be me on Yahoo Answers and it's pissing me off. There is no way for a non-member to report abuse. 131.215.115.31 21:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually some celebrities have official accounts on Answers. You can tell they aren't normal users by the "Official" marker on their profile page. Also they tend to feature on the front page.

Real celebrities include Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton. Antisora 12:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah right. Get real. I don't think it's the celebrity themselves, I think it's a PR firm who paid Yahoo Answers to put their famous person on an official profile, so that they can get publicity. Actual celebrities are normal people, and wouldn't want to be recognized. A real celebrity will create a normal anonymous Yahoo ID like everyone else and not tell anybody about their real identity. Elle Bee 14:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Elle, I think that goes without saying. For such Official appearances they are obviously for publicity and would no doubt be handled by a representative or PR firm rather than themselves. The recent Lost & Number 23 'Official'-marked members are the clear signs of that. Regardless, I would think that the Official accounts represent the celebrity in question as well as their views and opinions (albeit most likely dumbed down by the rep) and are not simply a member of the public masquerading as them. Antisora 12:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

True, there are "official" celebrities on Y! Answers. Some of them might actually be the people themselves, but generally the aim is publicity, or something of the sort. Paul Haymon 05:02, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I changed to a few hours. A few minutes is a gross over generisation. It is quite common to get answers after a few days especially just before a question goes into voting..but there is now way prove it as there are no statisics showing when questions are answered. So I think a few hours sound a better compremise. I few minutes is just not true as many users take longer than that to write an answer!

May 5th 2007: Hi Micah Alpern, design lead for Answers again. All profiles marketed with "Official" under the titles are actual questions from the celebrities or special guests involved. In some cases very busy / important people (like the President of India or Opera) have a staff that may help them prepare a question, but the Question IS actually from the real person and not an impostor.

Given this background I have some suggestions for how to improve the wording of the "Special Guest" section. How about something more like this:

"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."

I haven't contributed to that many articles in wikipedia so if you have feedback on my proses or process please let me know. My email is alpern at yahoo-inc dot com. I was going to leave this suggestion on the discussion page for a few days to collect comments before incorporating it into the article. Thanks! Micah Alpern

May 12, 2007: We'll I didn't see any comments on my suggestion so I'm going to make the change. If you have concerns or thoughts please add them to this thread. Malpern 22:09, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

A few questions:

I'm not too familar with Answers but a few things jump out at me after seeing the Q&A pages. Maybe someone who knows these can add them to the article:

1. Where do all those cute avatars come from?
2. "In order to ask a question or to answer one, one has to have a Yahoo! account with a positive score balance" -- How do you get a positive score to start with?
3. The Yahoo Answers user profiles appear separate from the other Yahoo services. Can we get more info about that?

Squidfryerchef 18:55, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

1. The avatars are from Yahoo avatars, or a Yahoo 360 picture can be used
2. You are given 100 points on opening a Yahoo answers account
3. You use your standard yahoo services id to log into answers but can choose any id to be displayed in answers

I have tried to address your queries in the article Oxyman 12:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Squidfryerchef 15:35, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Online Celebrities

There should be an online Celebrities topic. I'm not talking about Oprah or others, i mean popular people on there, like The What Should I Do Retard. (If youv'e heard of him) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.170.93.169 (talk) 23:37, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

I don't think that people like the one you've mentioned require mention. The majority are just forum trolls - publicity only encourages them to be more annoying.Antisora 12:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right (sorry about the unisgned comment), but I think there should be a reference to trolls under critisism in this article. 70.170.93.169 10:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Trolls are common...humanoids...in all forums I've been to. Therefore, if other forum articles on Wikipedia specifically mention trolls, it may be worth mentioning them in this article. Otherwise, it could almost be assumed that they exist. I'm not sure that singling trolls out is appropriate, though my only rationale for saying that is the fact that it might encourage such behavior. Paul Haymon 04:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Abuse system - Less controversial example?

The thumbs up/down abuse has been noted with mention of the "debate" over evolution/creation. Could this be changed to something that's a little less controversial and a bit more vague? It seems as thought it's been added to accent the point that people don't agree on that topic. Antisora 12:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I have no better example at the moment, though. Paul Haymon 04:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Homework Cheating

I have modified various sentences in the Homework Cheating section, mainly rephrasing some generalisations, for instance 'being expelled or suspended' → 'penalized'. Expelling or suspension is not the only form of sanction in schools. I also removed a sentence concerning the a lack of awareness on how much of the cheated work is actually marked. Chris Buttigieg 17:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Rating System (Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down)

I noticed that there is no heading for this topic. It ought to be added, for clarification. Information about it is already in the article. It needs to be combined and put under a clear heading. Paul Haymon 04:57, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Weasel

"Yahoo! Answers is essentially a copy-cat version of the successful AnswerBag that launched back in 2003."

I'm removing that. -Uagehry456|Talk_{JordanhillVote} 19:56, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Point and levels system

Questions are initially open for 3 days, not four, and expiration can be extended to 7 days, not eight.

"three points for selecting a best answer to one's own question or having one's question resolved by a vote."

A questioner does not receive three points for having his/her question resolved on a general vote. The questioner who has not selected a best answer for the question personally, may vote on the responses later, but only receives one point like all the other voters. 3 points are awarded to askers who select best answer simply as an incentive, otherwise no one would select a best answer to their question, allowing it to run to a vote every time. Also, the asker's vote on an unresolved question is worth the same as anybody else's. Some questions have hundreds of people voting on them, the asker's vote in this case is quite insignificant. For this reason, it would make no sense to give the asker 3 points when the question is resolved, since he/she played a small or no part in resolving it.

Level and content of questions

"Although a question may be answered immediately, often the answer is trite or unrelated or if the question appears to challenge another religion is often answered with multiple insults sometimes in the form of questions themselves."

Questions do not just challenge religions, they challenge all manner of ideologies, including religion, politics, race relations and ethnic issues, gender-specific criticisms, criticisms pointed towards people or institutions having particular characteristics, e.g. old people, conservative or liberal groups, etc. All such questions, and many others, are often responded to with trite or insulting replies. It would make sense to change the above lines from "religion" to "ideologies".

"If a person posts many answers they are eventually labeled "Top Contributor" on their avatar. This gives the deceptive impression that the person labeled as such has given mainly valuable answers and is therefore trustworthy to a high degree. However, just the opposite can be true - the top contributor could merely be a top contributor of unhelpful answers."

This is completely groundless. Although Yahoo! does not disclose its formula(e) to award Top Contributer status "to avoid abuse", top contributers in a particular section usually have a very large percentage of "Best Answers" from askers or voters. Although askers/voters are often driven by positive subjective opinions, or fan-favouritism, towards a particualr answerer, that does not mean all their answers are trite or useless. The majority of top Contributors are experts in their fields or do a lot of research to come up with the answers they provide.

"There are questions where "best answer chosen by voters" was not voted for at all."

This is also untrue, the best answer must have received at least one vote before being so declared. If 2 or more answers receive equal number of votes (zero votes or more), voting on the question goes into Tiebreaker mode, where the first answer to receive one more vote than the others is selected Best Answer.

Lack of biased voting control

"The current top religious contributor on Yahoo! Answers is not surprisingly a Catholic."

I am not sure how this has been verified, but even if this person has publicly stated that he/she is a Catholic, that does not mean that the religion section is dominated by Catholics or that they impose their agenda upon everybody. Plenty of non-religious people frequent the religion page and vehemently put forward their arguments. The above statement is pointless since the Top Contributer in a section is only human and has all attendant weaknesses, i.e. the Top Contributer in religion would most likely have to espouse a particular religious belief. This cannot be held against them, for, by being Top Contributor, they are after all answering questions to a lot of people's liking, and so one must contend that their participation is useful, even if one does not agree with him/her. Freedom of speech and religion is paramount here.

"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."

Yes, it is true, but what is the point. In Yahoo!'s own words, points cannot be redeemed for prives or gifts or be used to buy anything. Points awarded are unlimited for a particular question; any number of people may answer. By gaining points through frivolous statements, these users are not taking points away from serious users of the site. Avman M 12:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Further criticism

Just seeking clarification on this - it may be an unfortunate one-off or a common problem (but I doubt that, since it doesn't seem to be mentioned here, and I haven't heard of it before) - I have an account I've been using for a few months, but yesterday I logged out (temporarily) and today when I logged back in it recognised my account but treated me as if I hadn't used Answers before, and I discovered my 700 points had been wiped and my questions (and possibly answers - I didn't check) had also been removed. (Just to be clear - I hadn't logged in or out since creating me account.) Anyone have a similar experience or know anything else about this? •97198 talk 09:30, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Redl, my name is Micah Alpern and I work on the Yahoo! Answers team. We haven't heard of this problem before. If you contact me I can look into the issue. My email address is alpern at yahoo-inc dot com. Thanks, Malpern 06:44, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Criticism Section

Yahoo! Answers is not bad at all, The only bad effect on it is the people who abuse it. Complex-Algorithm 23:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The point is self-evident: "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." "the number of points awarded for a correct answer is fixed, unlike on sites such as Experts Exchange." etc. That said, it does seem laden with WP:OR and could use a lot of cleanup. MrZaius^talk 08:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, Mr. Zaius, not everyone on Yahoo! Answers "wikipastes". In Yahoo! Answers, we expect personal explanations, not some article written by a computer. Complex-Algorithm 21:58, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I do not understand your response. Please clarify your argument as to why the criticism section is unnecessary - It seems rather nonsensical at present. Do you mean that the article should, for some unknowable reason, focus solely on the functionality of the site and not discuss the social aspects? Again, the only thing I can see that's wrong with the section is that it's ladened with inadequately source original research. MrZaius^talk 14:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I also mean that there are more good things to say about it than to criticize about it. All web applications may have a bug, but at least they realize it and correct it. The criticism section may make some people feel better, but personal experiences on the article should not be written. After all, isn't this site a Neutral Point of View? Complex-Algorithm 20:04, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Plenty of reasons to have a criticisms section. Why? For plenty of reasons. They are all the plenty of criticisms that are listed on the page about yahoo answers. Loansince 06:49, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Quite. However, the current section was unsalvageably laden with WP:OR, and absolutely none of it was reliably sourced/verifiable. Let's start from scratch after digging up some real sources. Third party forum posts and OR based on select excerpts from Yahoo! Answers doesn't cut it. MrZaius^talk 18:46, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Proliferation of foreign propaganda

I'm concerned that the latest addition to the criticism section below is not NPOV and is not (based on my experience and data I've seen) common practice on Answers. I would suggest removing this addition, but wanted to get feedback before doing so. Fully discloser: I’m a member of the Yahoo! Answers team. Malpern 15:26, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

"A significant number of questions posted on Yahoo! Answers are, posted on Yahoo! Answers are, in fact, hostile propaganda cleverly masked as empirical questions. Many of the perpetrators behind these influential actions appear to possess a limited command of the English. However, this is a particularly scandalous phenomenon as the large potion of clientele are juveniles." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Malpern (talk • contribs) 15:24, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Not just NPOV but half crazed. Fixed - along with the removal of the rest of the sections in criticism that made no attempt at third party citations/the most blatant examples of WP:OR. MrZaius^talk 15:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the edits MrZaius, I tend to agree with them, but it appears other did not as most have been reverted. As someone whose somewhat new to this process what's the best way to resolve this apparent conflict? Malpern 10:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

A fair number were just new info added that falls prey to the same concerns. [3] There's the edit before mine to the edit after mine. No defense made for any of the unsourced OR - I say strike it and let them defend it here before reposting. It's going to be nearly impossible to find Wikipedia:Reliable sources for most of the cruft. The section needs to be rewritten from scratch, when sources are found. Anyone know of any off the top of your head? MrZaius^talk 14:17, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I don't know if it was appropriate to remove the entire criticism section as there was plenty of sourced information as I recall besides some of the vandalism that went on with it. Besides, Ttis person, Malpern, is a member of yahoo answers according to him. I don't think he should be the person we listen to for bias on the matter and many of the criticism about yahoo answers were legit, such as the deletion of accounts without warnings. Masta P 21:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

After a 2nd look see of this page, I noticed that sourcing this information isn't even needed. A lot of these criticisms weren't even really about the site it self, but about problems certain users cause on the site, so I erased what wasn't the site's fault. Criticisms about the trolling, how certain users post all their homework answers and whatnot isn't really connected to the site. Those criticism have to do with the users. I would suggest something more along the lines of criticizing the site for even having a homework help section that could even give a kid the idea to cheat on their homework, because its like what kid wouldn't do that.

I've left the section that criticizes the site about stuff they're responsible for, on the page. Particularly the site's complaint system and how they choose to handle problems. The whole criticism about account deactivation and the deactivation of all other Yahoo! services, is definitely the site's fault, not the users who use the site. Masta P 07:51, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Criticism section, part deux

Please do not remove the OR and primary sources cleanup templates until the Criticism section is clear of Wikipedia:Original research and reliably, verifiably sourced with third party references. There is currently nothing but links to Yahoo! itself and to an offsite blog, neither of which are adequate. Links to and analysis of Answers themselves, in this instance, constitute original research - not necessarily uninteresting, but certainly unencyclopedic. The sections faults are not so egregious as they were when the section was stricken last week, but a considerable amount of work remains to be done. If no reliable sources for these criticisms can be found, it would make sense to strip it down to a discussion of differences between Yahoo! Answers! and! its! competitors! that elucidate some of the same points but without the neutrality issues inherent in covering unsourceable "criticism." MrZaius^talk 02:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that the criticism section has been removed. Perhaps someone is taking it out until further sources can be cited. Involinstance 22:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Involuntary instance (talk • contribs)

I did initially remove it, but a restored, older version is still in place as of this edit. Yahoo!_Answers#Criticisms - Still prone to all the same concerns, though, and likely to be stricken if it's not shored up. MrZaius^talk 22:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Mr. Zaius, I was thinking about working on some proposed revisions to the description of Answers Community moderation system. In September we released a new community moderation system which is designed:

"[to empower] reliable Answers users to quickly remove inappropriate content. Members of the community who reliably identify and report questions and answers will be trusted more than others. If a question or answer is reported by one or more reliable users, it will be removed." http://help.yahoo.com/l/nz/yahooxtra/answers/moderation/moderation-242294.html

Some other related sources:

"Do you have questions about community moderation?" http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-d8pH0dcoRKeB12yOcnUQp.9VCFos?p=28200

"How do I appeal when the community removes my question or answer?" http://help.yahoo.com/l/nz/yahooxtra/answers/moderation/moderation-242295.html

"Are you wondering how community moderation is doing?" http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-d8pH0dcoRKeB12yOcnUQp.9VCFos?p=28751

These descriptions are from the official product help pages and product update blog. Would these be considered acceptable sources?

If not there is also this article by Matt McGee of "Small Business SEM" which quotes similar sources: "Yahoo Answers Expands Community Moderation" http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/2007/09/21/yahoo-answers-expands-community-moderation

Malpern 05:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Only one of those links meets WP:RS, and that only barely. Blogs and forum posts are generally not considered reliable sources, with a handful of exceptions. MrZaius^talk 13:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)