Effectiveness of yahoo answers ?
109909
Not very effective, but definitely entertaining.  The problem is that the entire system perpetuates common folk lore and not facts. First of all the people answering, tend to not really know anything (this includes me). Common stereotypes, urban legends, misconception and misinformation are amplified in this system, since there is a higher frequency of common answers as compared to factual responses. Then the process to rate the best answer through a popular vote is simply not the best process to ensure accuracy.  Voting is not based on fact but collective agreement with the lowest common denominator. Or as Stephen Colbert says "truthiness".   Just because everyone thinks something is true does not mean it is correct.  Remember the whole world is flat thing?\n\nSo in the end Yahoo answers and other similar collaborative information system, only perpetuating the common mis-understanding and does not build knowledge. Yahoo answers is a public catalog displaying what is commonly believed in our society, not facts.\n\nHowever, I do have a few suggestions for Yahoo if they want to guide the product towards becoming a useful, fact based knowledge management tool.\n\n1)For technical, history, geographic or other academic questions, require sources and supporting materials.  Yahoo can then systematically rate the sources and their relationship to the argument and rate its relevance. Enable to argue the points in a social debate format.  Have people question and affirm fact and points not opinions.\n2)Voting for the most popular answer is like a high school prom vote, not very informative.  Instead Yahoo should establish an expert panel who will rate the answers based on the facts and deductive reasoning.  This panel can be comprised on the community members but they should be selected on merit, knowledge and not popularity.\n\nHowever, don’t get me wrong, feel free not to change anything.  After all, the whole site has a ton of content and keeps me entertained.\n\nHere's to you AMY T (you rock if you read this).
80868
It depends on what time of day you post.  If you post in the morning or afternoon a lot of times you'll get better answers.  Also, some people try to get stuff in really fast to get points.  The more thought out answers take time to write so they end up after the quick ones.
538632
Thus, the whole purpose of Yahoo Answers, to get REAL answers, from REAL people.\n\nAnd you could just try\n\nwww.ask.com\nwww.altavista.com (its what ask or yahoo uses data from, I forget which)
616147
yahoo does tend to be a tight wad sometime i agree. some of the questions i think should be removed are not though so i don't understand them.
1149156
Best part of Yahoo! Answers? Getting people to answer your essay/paper questions/topics.
175088
I've no complaints about the organization on Yahoo. I get around just fine and I kinda like the "White" background. So the point is, keep on wondering.\nThanks for the points
803247
stuck on answers.yahoo
578964
Yes, I like the rating of the answers, and it is challenging to try to get points, but it should be for decent, legit answers.
517291
http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/index.php?module=prodreviews\nthis will give you tips to getting narrowed responses from www.google.com, i dont know about yahoo os msn
25440
Information sharing and accuracy of information is very critical these days. There is ton of information available in this world but how will you convert this information into knowledge and how will you identify good information from bad or wrong information? The answer is YAHOO !!! Answers...\n\nThe benifit of YAHOO Ansewer is:\n1. The Answers are provided by users like you who are expert in the field or has knowledge about the topic.\n2. There are many brilliant minds collabrating to share information to conclude knowledge\n3. Allows community to decide what is right given context of current world.\nand much much more...\n\nLove the service and looking forward to see this service become a source for knowledge.
868083
I have often wondered when Yahoo would 'get it'. This site has evolved into something their Community Guidelines could never have anticipated. And their relentless pursuit to get users to 'conform' is equally disappointing. Talk about having a 'goldmine' and not knowing how to 'mine it' !!!\n\nThere has been a recent, significant decline of users on this site as well. I'm talking about 'post election' numbers only . Even well after the elections, this site was 'rockin'. I believe many, many users got fed-up with the 'reporting sytem' and it's 'blind enforcement'. Again, go back to having a 'goldmine' and not knowing how to 'mine it' !!!\n\nThis topic is worthy of Full View by all Y/A users. Perhaps you should post this in the 'forum', and encourage all users to respond. Yahoo does recognize 'one thing'. And the 'one thing' is NUMBERS !!!!\n\nFeel free to email me,, if you plan on posting this in the 'forum'. I'll gladly respond. Thank you for addressing this issue!!!
60970
LOL!  Actually, if you think about it, this one's not so bad.  We are really expanding our knowledge base here.  Cheers to yahoo for coming up with one that puts our brains to use.
39896
LOT OF ANSWERS AND THAN\nVOTE FOR BEST ANSWERS IN UNDECIDED SECTION AND\nDISCOVER THE RESOVED QUESTIONS AND VOTE THUMBS RATING..
184923
People start off innocently enough. The first few levels have reasonable limits for answering questions and such, so people get used to maxing out their limits for the day. As they get to the higher levels, they find that though it's taking up more time they just have to reach their quota.\n\nThe users that provide good answers get selected as Best Answer, and it gives them a sort of rush. It feels so good that they have to keep doing it.\n\nThe points and levels give people a goal. Often people will think, if I can just get to this level then I'll give it a rest. However, they keep going after they get there because they see all the people ahead of them.\n\nThere's a Yahoo! Group for addicts, but it may actually encourage use of Y!A rather than discourage it. If interested, you can find it at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AnswerholicsAnonymous/
92172
posting hw questions online and getting answers\n\njust like you did !
146184
I dont think ppl r wasting there time in yahoo.I like it very much.It's alot of fun.
735088
I went into the forum and there are alot of people complaining because their questions are not coming up.  Some of them are losing points some how, 1 person ended up with like 3000 points and said that they hadn't even come close to earning that many.  Others are not getting their points for answering questions.  Apparently they change the program or some darn thing (on the 15th) and they are still working the bugs out.  I was having a rough time trying to answer questions because the answer box wasn't coming up for me.\n\nHope this answers your questions.  They are supposed to be working on all the problems.  lol