Webupon

The different services provided by Yahoo! cover a wide spectrum, ranging from Astrology to Weather (there wasn’t a section that began in “Z” unfortunately). Yahoo! Answers is one of the most popular services which is provided by Yahoo!, as it has a huge community which readily contribute to sections including dating advice, health, science and entertainment but to name a few. A user can add a question to the site and have it go live within seconds, reaching an audience of thousands of people immediately. The format of the site is similar to other online forums which populate the internet.

Yahoo! Answers is a completely free service to use and is run almost independently by the thousands of community members which have signed up to use it. Anyone with a Yahoo ID can begin to contribute very quickly, either by posting their own question or attempting to resolve the queries of others by adding their own suggestions to peoples’ questions as soon as they have set themselves up with a suitable username. An immediate question which springs to people’s mind when they hear the concept is regarding the initiative behind Yahoo! Answers. Indeed there is no financial reward for the users propelling the service, however there is a simple points and levelling system in order to get people addicted to the service. Asking a question “costs” 10 points, whist answering a question successfully and having your contribution chosen as the best one will reward you 10 points. This doesn’t seem like the most rewarding system; however it soon becomes very addictive and people strive to become a “Top Contributor”; a person who has got a high percentage of their answers being chosen as the best.

There is a huge community that uses the site, although some people are more helpful than others. As with all free-to-use services there will always be people who abuse the site which in this instance means people who will ask stupid questions and only ever give stupid and occasionally offensive answers. The site is moderated by the staff at Yahoo! though so that contributions which aren’t worthwhile or are against the site’s censorship policy. Users can also flag down user which are constantly making a nuisance so that they can be banned from the site (either permanently or on a temporary basis).

Another flaw in the site is that some sections are a lot more popular than others. A question can be asked in the “Family and Relationships” section and gain dozens of answers within minutes whilst a question could be asked in a less popular section such as social sciences and may take several hours for a person to come along with a contribution which answers your question. This, I suppose, is a good a reason as any to spread the word about the site to other people and to make sure that you answer as many questions that you ask.

The site itself is remarkably easy to use; the search tool will always find accurate results to resolved questions so that you can have a look at what other people have suggested to past problems. Asking a question is one of the most important parts of Yahoo! Answers and thankfully is remarkably easy to do, simply type in the question, a short description, choose a category and away you go! Answering is a similarly easy process and it may only take a few seconds to a minute to type an answer to a question and have it appear on the site. The layout and colour scheme of the site overall is similar to all of Yahoo!’s other pages, meaning it is remarkably quick and easy to find exactly what you are looking for and isn’t too over the top.

Overall I believe, as an active user of Yahoo! Answers, that you should at least try out the service for a short period of time to see if it helps you. If anything it will save some time trawling through search results on Google. As well as this it is passive process so that you can ask a question and come back to it in a little while and hopefully find out the answer. It is free to try after all, so you have nothing to lose.