Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven
question-and-answer (Q&A) site or a
knowledge marketA knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, so the traditional commodity market mechanism can be...
launched by
Yahoo!Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
on June 28, 2005 that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users. The site gives members the chance to earn points as a way to encourage participation and is based on Naver's
Knowledge iNKnowledge Search service is an information-sharing tool launched in 2002 for Naver users. The tool allows users to ask just about any question, such as how to cook "ramen" or how to subscribe to international magazines via the Internet, and get answers from other users...
.
Yahoo! Answers is available in 12 languages, but several Asian sites operate a different platform which allows for non-Latin characters. The platform is known as in Japan and as
Yahoo! Knowledge in Korea, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. An Arabic language Q&A platform called
Seen Jeem is available through the Yahoo! subsidiary
MaktoobMaktoob Inc. is an Arab Internet services company, founded in Amman, Jordan known for being the first Arabic/English email service provider. "Maktoob" in Arabic means "letter", "written", or "Destiny". Maktoob today has more than 280 employees with offices in Amman, Dubai, Cairo, Riyadh, and...
.
Yahoo! Answers was created to replace
Ask Yahoo!, Yahoo!'s former Q&A platform which was discontinued in March 2006.
Yahoo! Answers is the second most popular Q&A site in the US after
Answers.comAnswers.com is an Internet-based knowledge exchange, which includes WikiAnswers, ReferenceAnswers, VideoAnswers, and five international language Q&A communities. The Answers.com domain name was purchased by Bill Gross and Henrik Jones at idealab in 1996. The domain name was acquired by NetShepard...
, according to comScore.
Site operation
Any question is allowed on Yahoo! Answers, except ones that violate the Yahoo! Answers community guidelines. To encourage good answers, helpful participants are occasionally featured on the Yahoo! Answers Blog. Though the service itself is free, the contents of the answers are owned by the respective users — while Yahoo! maintains a non-exclusive royalty-free worldwide right to publish the information. Chat is explicitly forbidden in the Community Guidelines, although categories like Politics and Religion & Spirituality are mostly opinion. Users may also choose to reveal their
Yahoo! MessengerYahoo! Messenger is an advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!...
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 be represented by a picture from Yahoo! Avatars or an uploaded picture. When answering a question, a user can perform a Yahoo! or
WikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
search for research.
Questions are initially open to answers for four days. However, the asker can choose to close the question after a minimum of one hour 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 of five points or more.
The points system is weighted to encourage users to answer questions and to limit
spamForum spam is the creating of messages that are advertisements, abusive, or otherwise unwanted on Internet forums. It is generally done by automated spambots.- Types of spam :...
questions. There are also levels (with point thresholds) which give more site access. 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. Users also receive ten points for contributing the "Best Answer" which is selected by the question's asker or voted on by the community. Contributors often vote for their own answer regardless of its quality or appropriateness. At the same time, many questions are posed by the asker without any real desire to gain knowledge.
In addition to points awarded for activity, Yahoo! Answers staff may also award extra points if they are impressed with a user's contributions. The Yahoo! Answers community manager has stated that "power users" who defend the company should be thanked and rewarded.
Level Table*
| |
Level 0 |
Level 1 |
Level 2 |
Level 3 |
Level 4 |
Level 5 |
Level 6 |
Level 7 |
| Points |
0 |
1-249 |
250-999 |
1,000-2,499 |
2,500-4,999 |
5,000-9,999 |
10,000-24,999 |
25,000+ |
| Questions |
0 |
5 |
10 |
15 |
20 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
| Answers |
1** |
20 |
40 |
60 |
80 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
| Commentaries |
0 |
10 |
20 |
30 |
40 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
| Stars |
0 |
10 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| Evaluation permission |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Vote |
0 |
25 |
50 |
75 |
100 |
125 |
150 |
200 |
- * There is a 24 hour limitation period.
- ** Level 0 users are instantly promoted to level 1 after their first answer.
Top Contributor
The point system ostensibly encourages users to answer as many questions as one possibly can, up to his or her daily limit. Once a user achieves, and provided the user maintains a certain minimum number of such contributions (See Note*, further...), the user may receive an orange "badge" under the name of his or her avatar, naming the user a Top Contributor (TC). The user can lose this badge if one does not maintain his or her level of participation. 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. One can be a Top Contributor in a maximum of 3 categories. The list of Top contributors is updated every Monday. Although Yahoo! Answers staff has kept secret the conditions of becoming a TC, many theories exist among users, for example:
- Maintaining a weekly (mystery) "quota" of answers in the category.
- User wanting to become a TC must have more than or equal to 12% Best answers.
- User should be at least on level 2, although there have been claims that first-level users with TC Badge have been seen.
- User should concentrate only on one particular category to become a Top Contributor for that category.
Out of these, none have an official status. This feature began March 8, 2007.
Official
This type of badge is found on the name of celebrities (like mentioned above) and government departments like the health department.
Knowledge Partners
These badges are found under the name of the companies or organizations who share their personal knowledge and experience with the members of Yahoo! Answers.
Academic studies
A number of studies have looked at the structure of the community and the interaction between askers and responders. Studies of user typology on the site have revealed that some users answer from personal knowledge – “specialists” – while others use external sources to construct answers – “synthesists”, with synthesists tending to accumulate more reward points. Adamic et al looked at the
ego networksA social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
of users and showed that it is possible to distinguish "answer people" from "discussion people" with the former found in specialist categories for factual information, such as mathematics and the latter more common in general interest categories, such as marriage and wrestling. They also show that answer length is a good predictor of "best answer" choice. Kim and Oh looked at the comments given by users on choosing best answers and showed that content completeness, solution feasibility and personal agreement/confirmation were the most significant criteria.
Quality
The site has been criticized as being more about social networking than providing accurate information. Researchers found that questions seeking factual information received few answers and that the knowledge on Yahoo! Answers is not very deep.
Despite the presence of experts, academics and other researchers, Yahoo! Answers' base consists of a much more general group; hence, it has been criticized for its high quantity of dubious questions, such as "How is babby formed? How girl get pragnent? ", which sparked an
Internet memeThe term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
, and for the reliability, validity, and relevance of its answers. A 2008 study found that Yahoo! Answers is suboptimal for questions requiring factual answers and that the quality decreases as the number of users increases. One journalist observed that the structure Yahoo! Answers provides, particularly the persistence of inaccuracies, the inability to correct them and a point structure that rewards participation more readily than accuracy all indicate that the site is oriented towards encouraging use of the site, not offering accurate answers to questions.
The number of poorly-formed questions and inaccurate answers has made the site a target of ridicule. Likewise, posts on many internet forums and Yahoo! Answers itself indicate that Yahoo! Answers attracts a large number of trolls.
The site does not have a system that filters the correct answers from the incorrect answers. It only allows the user community to choose the best answer from a line-up of answers.
Once the "best answer" is chosen, there's no way to add more answers, nor to improve or challenge existing answers; there is a display of thumbs down or thumbs up for each answer, but viewers cannot vote. Also, while answers can be briefly commented upon, the comment is not visible by default and is hence hardly read (even the user who posts the question isn't notified about an incoming comment to his/her posted question). The only chance to give a better (or correct) answer is the next time the same question is asked, but the older answer will still likely get higher priority in search engines. And any new answer will most probably therefore be 'lost' on any original questioner.
Privacy
Some privacy concerns have been raised regarding embarrassing or private information.
Users can not delete their accounts. A user can only "deactivate" an account but the profile, questions, and answers remain visible and searchable.
Prior to 2010, a new user's default privacy setting would enable any other user to send an IM or contact him or her via inline mailing system. Post 2010, the default privacy settings were such that a new user can only contact another user via Yahoo! Pulse (unless the user has activated communication via the IM and email option in the settings page).
Yamster
The official Yahoo! Answers mascot is a cartoon hamster called "Yamster". Yamster is a combination, or portmanteau, of the words Yahoo!, Answers, and hamster. The mascot is also used as an avatar for Yahoo! Answers staff.
During beta testing of Yahoo! Answers in 2005, the Director of Product Management would use a Gemmy Kung Fu Hamster to summon employees to meetings. The toy was a battery-operated, dancing, musical plush hamster clothed in a karate uniform. A Yahoo! Answers employee selected a photo of the toy as the staff avatar. A user then questioned the potential trademark/copyright infringement of using such an avatar. At that time, the photo was replaced with the Yahoo! Answers green smiley face. At the beginning of 2006, the green smiley face was replaced by the cartoon Yamster clad in a karate uniform. , the history of Yamster, complete with photos of the toy, was available on the Yahoo! Answers Team Vietnam blog.
Answers on the Street
Beginning July 2, 2010, Yahoo! Answers began featuring weekly video segments called Yahoo!
Answers on the Street. Hosted by
J. Keith van StraatenJ. Keith van Straaten is an American actor, host, and writer. He was born in Chicago, Illinois.On TV, he hosted the first season of the game show Beat the Geeks in 2001. In 2006, he began appearing as a panelist on VH1's Best Week Ever...
, 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.
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. During the
2008 U.S. Presidential campaignThe United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
, Hillary Clinton,
John McCainJohn Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
,
Barack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, and
Mitt RomneyWillard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.The son of George W...
posted questions on Yahoo! Answers, in addition to YouTube. In an awareness campaign, "UNICEF Up Close 2007", nine UNICEF ambassadors asked questions. The launch of Answers on Yahoo! India included a question from A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the President of India at that time. Other guests have included international leaders (
Queen Rania of Jordan http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile?show=gW7fcvJWaa, candidate for
United Nations Secretary-GeneralThe Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the Secretariat of the United Nations, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General also acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations....
Shashi TharoorShashi Tharoor is an Indian politician and a Member of Parliament from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala...
http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile?show=yH7Kn6c9aa),
Nobel Peace PrizeThe Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
laureates (
Al GoreAlbert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
,
Muhammad YunusMuhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist and founder of the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides microcredit to help its clients establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency. In 2006 Yunus and Grameen received the Nobel Peace Prize...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061206123456AA1eYAL) and other international activists (
BonoPaul David Hewson , most commonly known by his stage name Bono , is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his...
,
Jean-Michel CousteauJean-Michel Cousteau is a French explorer, environmentalist, educator, and film producer. The first son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he is the father of Fabien Cousteau and Celine Cousteau.-Biography:...
http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=Algztat5wCyKkbSU7w4lg__py6IX?show=UV2sdWiiaa), intellectuals (
Stephen HawkingStephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...
,
Marilyn vos SavantMarilyn vos Savant is an American magazine columnist, author, lecturer, and playwright who rose to fame through her listing in the Guinness Book of World Records under "Highest IQ"...
), and numerous other celebrities.
Site statistics
Yahoo! used comScore statistics in December 2006 to proclaim Yahoo! Answers "the leading Q&A site on the web". Currently Yahoo! Answers is ranked as the second most popular Q&A site on the web by comScore. The slogan "The world's leading Q&A site" has since been adopted by Answers.com.
Yahoo! Answers staff claim 200 million users worldwide and 15 million users visiting daily. Google Trends reports around 4 million unique visitors (Global) daily. The web analytics website
QuantcastQuantcast is a California based company that provides publishers and marketers with the ability to understand, deliver and reach their best audiences at a massive scale...
reports around 2 million unique visitors (US) daily.
Quantcast traffic statistics for Yahoo! Answers, January 2010:
- 24,201,619 people per month (US)
- 62,171,200 visits per month (US)
Google Ad Planner traffic statistics for Yahoo! Answers, December 2009:
- 26,000,000 unique visitors (users) (US)
- 110,000,000 total visits (US)
Compete Site AnalyticsCompete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world...
traffic statistics for Yahoo! Answers, December 2009:
- 33,090,163 unique visitors (US)
- 64,928,634 visits (US)
Yahoo! Answers represents between 1.03% to 1.7% of Yahoo! traffic.
See also
- List of Question and Answer Websites
- Answerbag
Answerbag is a collaborative online database of FAQs, where questions are asked and answered by users. Instead of the one question—one answer model, multiple answers to a given question are presented, in descending order of user ratings. As of December 2006, Answerbag was the second largest...
- Ask MetaFilter
MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss content that users have discovered on the web.-Community:MetaFilter was founded by Matthew Haughey in 1999...
- Askalo
Askalo is a social networking and user-generated local question-and-answer site. Askalo users can ask questions about any local topic and share answers tailored to their individual needs.- History :...
- Askville
Askville is a user-driven research site founded by Amazon.com and opened to the public on December 8, 2006.-History:Askville was co-founded by Korean-American former investment banker Joseph Park, previously co-founder of Kozmo.com . The documentary film e-Dreams portrays the fate of the company...
- Blurtit
Blurtit is a Q&A website where people ask questions and a community of regular users provide answers based on their knowledge or opinions. Blurtit was founded in 2006, and is based in Norwich in Norfolk, UK...
- FunAdvice
FunAdvice.com is a social networking question-and-answer website. Users register to ask and answer questions, rate photos, chat, and write how-to guides...
- GirlsAskGuys
Girls Ask Guys.com is a Q&A website focusing on love, sex and relationships. The website offers its members tools to ask, answer questions, write articles, rate posts among others. The website was launched in June 2007 and has since been funded privately. Membership to GirlsAskGuys is free...
- Google Answers
Google Answers was an online knowledge market offered by Google that allowed users to post bounties for well researched answers to their queries. Asker-accepted answers cost $2 to $200. Google retained 25% of the researcher's reward and a 50 cent fee per question. In addition to the researcher's...
- Hunch
Hunch is a website, designed as a collective intelligence decision-making system that uses decision trees to make decisions based on users' interest. Hunch is building the 'taste graph' for the internet, mapping every person to every entity — and their affinity for that entity. The system asks...
- Knowledge Search
Knowledge Search service is an information-sharing tool launched in 2002 for Naver users. The tool allows users to ask just about any question, such as how to cook "ramen" or how to subscribe to international magazines via the Internet, and get answers from other users...
- LinkedIn Answers
LinkedIn Answers is a knowledge market service by LinkedIn. It is somewhat similar to 3form Free Knowledge Exchange, Naver Knowledge iN, Yahoo! Answers, and other knowledge markets...
- Quora
Quora is a question-and-answer website created, edited and organized by its community of users. The site was founded in June 2009, launched in private beta in December 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010....
- StackExchange
- Wiki Answers
External links