Yahoo!7 Answers Blog Australia

Photo by James Bowe

Throughout the month of March and into April, we will be celebrating the Food & Drink category on Yahoo!7 Answers with a menu of Autumn food created by you!

Unlike the rest of Yahoo! Answers globally who are currently preparing to embrace Spring the days here in Australia are getting steadily shorter and the weather is growing colder, so we will be focussing on foods suitable for eating during the season of Autumn. With your help, the menu will feature dishes for an entree (starter), main and dessert.

What do I need to do?

We’re glad you asked! By 12 noon AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on Tuesday, the 16th of March (that’s next week, 4 days away), we’d like you to submit open questions to us about a recipe you’d like to know for an entree, main dish or a dessert. They should be for dishes suitable for Autumn fare.

You can submit them by leaving a comment here with your link or by sending an email to us at y_answrs_team_au@yahoo.com.au.

Make sure your questions are open for the duration of a week. If you want to extend the duration of your question, simply click on the “Expiration Date” available in the action bar below your question via the “Edit” dropdown.

What next?

Stay tuned to our blog!

If your question is selected, it could appear for a full week in the Best of Answers module on our Answers front page and receive 50 bonus points to your Answers account. If at the end of the opening period of your question, you carefully select a better quality response, we will offer 20 extra points.

Be sure to keep an eye on this blog for further details as they emerge.

We look forward to your questions!

Kate
Community Manager

The Pakistan Cricket Board has taken the task of disciplining their players for recent infighting during Pakistan’s tour of Autralia, rather seriously; issuing lifetime bans from international Cricket for former captains, Younus Khan and Mohammad Yousuf.

It is reported they were charged with bringing the game into disrepute over their bickering and attitudes, which in turn affected the entire team and their performance. Other players have been issued with fines and bans ranging from six months to a year.

Speaking to the Cricinfo website, the PCB’s legal adviser Taffazul Rizvi explained the ramifications for Khan and Yousuf.

“They will not be part of any Pakistan team in any format from here on,” he said, adding that the PCB had stopped short of imposing a so-called life ban.

“A life ban means they cannot play domestic cricket or any other similar cricket, but we are not stopping them from that. They can play domestic cricket or county cricket here and abroad.”

Source: Yahoo!7 Sports News

We’d like to know your thoughts on this controversial move by the PCB:

• Is the banning of Mohammad Yousuf and Younus Khan from playing for Pakistan for life, a fitting penalty?

Leave a comment below or on the question above!

Kate
Community Manager

This morning’s headlines brought news of the passing of Hollywood actor, Corey Haim. Aged 38, it is suspected he died from an overdose after a long battle with substance abuse.

Corey rose to fame in the 1980’s alongside actors such as River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland; the heartthrob of millions. He is best known for his films “The Lost Boys” and “Lucas”, but has starred in countless TV shows, movies and specials in a career spanning almost 20 years.

He has a number of projects currently in post-production and recently returned to fame with fellow actor Corey Feldman in their TV series, “The Two Coreys”.

• What is your favourite TV show or movie starring Corey Haim?

What’s your favourite role played by Corey? Leave a comment below or answer on the question above!

Kate
Community Manager

Following our changes to the Search experience on Answers last week we received a lot of feedback from you, the community, around the changes we had made.

Advanced search changes

We’ve reacted to your feedback to make changes that now allow you to add parameters to the URL, which will enable you to sort the search results to your preference.  In order to do this, here are the parameters you would need to add:

• &orderby=+date (to sort by most recent)
• &orderby=-date (to sort by oldest)

For example a search for `dogs` gives this URL: http://au.answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs

If you want to sort search results by the most recent, simply add `&orderby=+date` to the end of the URL:  http://au.answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs&orderby=+date

We will look to add these filters within the page itself over the coming months.

In addition, we have noticed that search terms within quotation marks (“ and “) were returning no results.  A few code tweaks later and hey presto – results have now returned!

Further changes

Last but not least, we’ve also taken this opportunity to fix some other bugs on the site:

• For Internet Explorer users we’ve fixed the layout issue on the Ask/Answer/Discover banner.
• We have also made changes to content deletion.  Previously, when you deleted your question or answer, it was still showing in the public view of your profile page.  From now on when you delete a question or answer, it will be entirely removed from your public profile page

Keep the feedback coming!

As a part of the recent changes to Yahoo!7 Answers, we will also be rolling out a few changes to the search experience over the next few days.

We’ve taken the feedback you’ve provided and have incorporated your comments to improve the current search experience.  Through the new search experience, you’ll notice a new, re-designed layout on your search results page, making it easier to refine your search without having to leave the page.

1. We’ve taken all of the options which were previously available in Advanced Search and moved them to the left-hand-side of this page to make it easier to customise your search queries.
2. The category dropdown has been re-structured to fit this new design.
3. For those of you who perform the same search regularly, we’ve also thought of you: we’ve replaced the `Make this my default search option` with the `My Saved Search` feature.  `My Saved Search` allows you to save your favourite search so you can easily access the results from anywhere on Yahoo!7 Answers.  By checking this box Answers will store your most frequent searches.  You can then click on the `My Saved Search` link next to the `Search Answers` button to access your saved search from wherever you are on the site.

You can find out more about making the most of `My Saved Search` by checking out this help article.

As with all of the changes we’re making at the moment we’d love to hear your feedback.  Leave us a comment here on the blog or on the feedback thread on the Suggestion board.

Yesterday wasn’t just Yahoo!’s birthday but also that of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to us as the famous children’s author and illustrator – Dr. Seuss!

Most of us would have grown up with books such as “Green Eggs and Ham“, “Are you my Mother?”, “The Cat and the Hat“, “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish“, “Horton Hears a Who“, “Yertle the Turtle“, “The Lorax” and “Fox in Sox” to name but a few.

Born on the 2nd of March, 1904, Ted, as he was known to his friends and family, had written over 60 books by the time of his death in 1991 at the ripe old age of 87! He also wrote and published books under the pen names “Theo. LeSieg” and “Rosetta Stone”.

In honour of his birthday, we’d like to know the following:

• Which film written by Dr. Seuss won an academy award?

Did you have a favourite Dr. Seuss book growing up? Leave a comment below!

Kate
Community Manager

Although it’s already the 3rd of March over here in Australia, it’s still the 2nd in the Northern Hemisphere and so the celebrations for Yahoo!’s 15th Birthday continue…

Be sure to check out the special birthday message from Yahoo! Founders David Filo and Jerry Yang. Here’s a snippet:

We want to share our pride, gratitude and excitement on this 15^th birthday, with all Yahoo! users (600 million of them), customers and partners.  It continues to be an incredible ride for the two of us, as well as for thousands of Yahoo! employees we have had the privilege of working with over the years.

We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world, and will continue to focus on the values that brought us here —working hard, having fun, being passionate about your ideas, believing in each other, and always trying to invent the future.  And as we celebrate 15 years today, we are even more excited than ever about what lies ahead, and the potential of Yahoo! and the Internet.

And from the Yahoo! Messenger team:

Thanks to you, the users, for continuing to support us and use products like Yahoo! Messenger. We’ll be celebrating at all the Yahoo! offices today and know that if we could, we’d send each of you a slice of Yahoo! birthday cake.

Here are some images from celebrations in other Yahoo! offices:

Yahoo! 15th birthday celebration in Singapore. Photo by Yodel Anecdotal.

Yahoo! 15th birthday celebration in the Philippines. Photo by Yodel Anecdotal.

How did you celebrate? Leave a comment below!

Kate
Community Manager

Yahoo! turns 15 today!

And what’s a birthday party without cake? There are celebrations happening at Yahoo! offices all over the world on this special occasion. This is the cake we had in the Yahoo!7 offices this morning.

We all had different birthday cakes growing up, mostly homemade – my Mum’s specialities were different Sesame Street characters. My favourite was Big Bird!

Which brings me to this question:

• What is the best birthday cake you have ever had?

Happy Birthday and best wishes to each and every one of you, you are all part of what makes Yahoo!7 a great place to be

Kate
Community Manager

The next time you log into Yahoo!7 Answers you may notice things look a little bit different. We’re rolling out a new homepage and navigation over the next few days. Don’t worry: if you don’t see the new changes just yet, you will soon.

We’ve made quite a few changes to the homepage, so to make navigation a bit easier, we’ve broken things down for you by section, so let’s get started.

1- New Navigation

You may have noticed that atop the Answers banner, there are four new, navigation tabs: Home, Browse Categories, My Activity, and About. Each of these tabs (as well as the green Answers banner) will stay with you throughout your experience on the site, making it easier for you to get to the places on Answers you care about most.

Home: This brings you back to the main page of Answers, where you can see the Best of Answers rotating module, the link to the Answers Blog (which is now on the right hand side, as well as the most recent questions posted on the site.

Browse categories: more about this below

My activity: From here, you can go directly to your Answers profile, view your network, your network activity, and even edit your preferences.

About: Learn all about Answers, revisit the Community Guidelines, check out the leaderboard, Suggestion Board,  and visit the Answers Blog.

2 – Browsing categories

On the old Answers homepage all of the categories were permanently displayed on the left hand column, hogging up homepage space that could have been used for valuable questions. We’ve decided to tuck the categories away under the top hide-away menu where you can easily access them any time, or, if you want to view them all at once, just click on the browse category tab to be taken to the “All Categories” page. From here, you’ll be able to peruse all of the questions that are: open, resolved or in voting on the site.

3- An updated look and feel

Over the past few years we’ve heard from quite a few of you that you love the Answers green but it’s just a little too green. So we’ve taken your feedback to heart and have toned down the green just a bit and have replaced the white background with a light blue that is a little easier on the eyes. Our smilies have also received a facelift and look a bit more polished throughout the site.

Additionally, you’ll notice that the page feels a bit wider—one thing we heard from you when we introduced the new category pages several months back was that you liked the extra space. This extra space allows us to display even more questions on the homepage, making it easier for you to jump right in.

But wait, there’s more!

This release doesn’t just include cosmetic changes—we also included quite a few backend bug fixes, as well as a few feature requests, like updating the category leaderboards much more regularly. Starting today, category leaderboards will update on a daily basis instead of weekly.

Please note they will NOT be real-time, but will update at the beginning of each day (AEST).  This means at 9am AEST on Friday, your points total will show as it was at 7:59pm PST on Thursday.

Tell us what you think

Once you’ve given the new homepage a test drive, tell us what you think! We’ve started two threads on the Suggestion Board for the new homepage—one for questions and one for comments – and we’ll be checking them regularly.  Additionally, you’re always welcome to use the “Tell us what you think” link found at the bottom of every Yahoo!7 Answers page.  You’re also welcome to leave your comments here, on the blog.

Thanks, and we hope you like it!

It’s that day again and time for another Five on Friday!

Since everyone is no doubt really excited about the changes to Answers being rolled out over the next few days, we thought we’d keep today’s short and sweet.

We have a few different celebrities asking questions on Yahoo!7 Answers currently, as well as some sponsored questions that are worth taking a look at!

• Former V8 Supercar driver, Glenn Seton, asks “What dream would you like to turn into reality?“.
• Budding Home and Away star, Matylda Buczko, asks “If you could be any character on Home and Away, who would it be and why?“.
• Recent winner of the Nissan GT Academy Australian finals – Daniel Holland – who is currently being mentored by Glenn Seton, asks “Which driver do you admire?“.
• Channel Seven’s premier morning program, Sunrise, asks “What’s the best way to stop bullying and why?“.
• Intel are asking a question of a more practical nature – “What do you look for when you want to purchase a new computer?“.

If you have an answer for any of the above questions, be sure to go ahead and answer them!

If you have a question you’ve seen in your travels or you’d like some extra help on, leave a comment below or send us an email at y_answrs_team_au@yahoo.com.au with a subject of “Five on Friday”!

Kate
Community Manager