Yahoo!7 Answers Australia

Here at Yahoo!7 Answers we want to put the spotlight on you! We’re going to be choosing the users with the highest percentage of best answers, or who have asked the most interesting questions, to feature in our blog!!!

Isn’t that the most exciting thing you’ve heard all day?

So do you have what it takes? Perhaps you are an expert at answering DIY Renovation questions… or you consider yourself one of the the top points winners in the Science and Mathematics Category. If you think you have always given spectacularly impressive answers or if your questions always get people thinking and get lots of stars from other users let us know! Send an email to y_answrs_team_au@yahoo.com.au and we’ll choose a new user to be immortalized in the blog every week. To give you an idea of what your profile will look like on the blog page, here’s an example of a user who has already been featured on Yahoo!7 Answers.

Also, if you regularly come across a fellow user who you think is just top notch tell us about them and we’ll do our best to get in touch with them to set up their fifteen minutes of fame.

Remember… Yahoo!7 Answers is all about YOU!

Yahoo!7 Answers Team

By now, most of you know that we consider answers like “Thanks for the two points” and questions like “Ten points for the first answer” to be point-gaming, which is against community guidelines.
We are also aware, however, of point-gaming that happens in the background—using multiple accounts to choose your own best answers, targeting others with thumbs-down votes, or targeting others by repeatedly reporting them for abuse. Point-gaming isn’t always about gaining points—it’s also about attempting to take points away from others.

We are tracking this activity and are getting much more aggressive with people who engage in this behavior. We truly believe that Answers is about sharing your knowledge with the world and building communities. The point system and content quality features are meant to encourage good behavior and content, and abuse of these features is not ok.

We don’t want a few bad apples to spoil the site for everyone, so to most of you, thanks for preserving the spirit of Answers by participating with integrity.

Yahoo!7 Answers Team

A close up of the extremely freaky frilled shark

Grown ups are breathing a collective sigh of relief this week as the last of the summer holidays drain away and hundreds of thousands of Aussie kids are flushed back to school for the year. For two groups of kids – the lil’ tackers off to year one and the “tweens” about to start high school – this can be a stressful time and the questions on Yahoo!7 Answers have been coming thick and fast from both parents and students about how to cope with the transition.

The Queensland Government’s announcement that it will be introducing recycled drinking water in an effort to overcome water shortages in the state has also prompted a lot of feisty discussion this week. Everyone wants to know how safe recycled water is to drink, and whether or not others will be going along with the idea.

Lastly, there has been much talk of sharks over the past few days, initially because of the terrifying attack on a fisherman off the NSW south coast and then because of the prehistoric and rarely seen beastie called a frilled shark that surfaced from the deep in the waters off Japan. This eerie creature looked as though it was a cross between a shark and an eel and the footage has to be seen to be believed! I don’t think I’ll be scuba diving any time soon!
Clea

During this time of year the focus is always on the entertainment industry, with more award ceremonies than you can shake a stick at. I can only imagine how many hours the in-demand celebrities spend getting themselves ready for all those endless red carpet appearences and photo calls.

The excitement begins in January with the Golden Globes, moves on to the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Baftas and finishes at the end of February with the much hyped Academy Awards, or the Oscars as they are better known. There is always as much speculation and talk over what the stars wear as there is over which films actually deserve to win the awards and this year is no exception, with many questions being posted on Answers about who is the best and worst dressed and plenty of debate over who will walk away with the winning statues.

If you are an absolute Oscar junkie there are lots of great Oscar trivia questions throughout Yahoo!7 Answers, particularly in the Celebrities category, or you can find all the latest news by visiting one of Yahoo!7′s other great sites http://yahoo7.com.au/oscars.

Clea

Have you been starring questions? Giving a question that you think is top notch a star lets other users know that it’s worth checking out. Our featured celebrity questions are getting lots of stars, and plenty of others are building up their own star status very quickly. I’ve even managed to gather a few! It’s easy to star a question – just click on the little star underneath it and you’re done.

Stars is just the first of some exciting upgrades we have in store this year!

That’s all from me this week as Australia Day is just around the corner. There are some interesting questions and answers posted on holiday activities, and the reason behind why we get the day off every time the 26th of January rolls around.

I hope you have a great weekend no matter what you’re doing!

Clea

When Joanne B was wondering how to check whether her rainbow lorikeet was a boy or a girl she turned to Yahoo!7 Answers and was very quickly informed that in the absence of a freshly laid egg one can only determine the sex of such a pet via DNA testing.

And when Claire P wanted to know if she could train her rabbit to walk on a leash… yes that’s right – a rabbit on a leash… the Answers community had all the necessary pointers.

Whether trying to diagnose a case of doggy ringworm or wondering if turkeys can be kept for a purpose other than Christmas dinner, the Pets category is a great place to go for help. Users ask how to heal sick goldfish, request advice about chickens, seek tips on how to get dogs and cats to be friends and they even discuss my favourite animal – hamsters!

One of the most common questions in the Pets category is what names to give them – here’s one you can answer yourself!

Woof!

Clea

Every time there’s a Britney Spears rumour it grows wings and takes flight across the magazines and gossip sites of the world. This week’s latest – that she may be pregnant for the third time, certainly didn’t bypass the Yahoo!7 Answers celebrity category this week, with lots of users wondering whether or not Britney is saying “Oops! I did it again!”

Speaking of musical phenomena, this year’s Big Day Out is on everyone’s mind this week as it travels around the country. Rarely without controversy, the event has sparked a rush of questions after the media reported concert goers would be banned from taking the Australian flag to the Sydney show. That issue aside – the other big question is are there any tickets left???

As the school holidays draw to a close so too does the period of withdrawal from our favourite TV shows. The television category has been rife with questions about when users’ favourite series are coming back… and also about Sally Fletcher on Home and Away! Fans just can’t wait to know her fate after last year’s cliffhanger.

Here’s some trivia about the Home and Away theme song… just in case you ever wondered. (Don’t you just love Answers!)

Clea

Answer Paulo Coelho’s question.

This week we are featuring a question from award winning author Paulo Coelho.

Originally from Brazil, Paulo Coelho has written close to 20 books, many of which topped international best seller lists. His works have been translated into 62 languages and are sold in 150 countries.

Mr Coelho spent much of his life pursuing the ideas of spirituality and religion and his best known book ‘The Alchemist’ is about a young boy who achieves spiritual enlightenment after travelling the world in order to fulfil his dreams. Thus his question to the Answers community is “How would the world be different if people began to follow their dreams?”

For me, this quote from the book added an extra dimension to this great writer’s question – “No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

What’s your dream? How would following it change your life and the lives of those around you? Ponder that a while and then give your perspective on taking the steps to turn dreams into reality.

Clea

It has been all systems go at Yahoo!7 Answers this week with the implementation of the new “Stars” feature (you can read all about in Thursday’s blog posting). I have been having a great time giving stars to the questions that I think are worthy of other users’ attention. It is really easy to star a question – you just point your curser over the star at the bottom of the question and click on it. If you change your mind you can “unstar” questions by simply clicking on the star a second time. The better your question is the more stars you are likely to receive so get asking!

Ernie Dingo from Channel 7′s The Great Outdoors chose best answers to the questions he posted over the Christmas break this week. There were so many fantastic recommendations of “Australia’s Best” that he will have a lot of research to do before deciding which places to feature on the show. I am very envious of his task of finding Australia’s best cake shop!

The action at the Australia Open tennis has kept everyone distracted this week. The final winners are yet to be crowned but there is much speculation over who they will actually be – and if there is any chance of Roger Federer not dominating the men’s singles for the second year running. A lot of users are keeping up with modern technology and asking where they can view the matches online.

That’s all from me at the end of this week – it’s only a short one for most of us next week with the Australia Day long weekend just around the corner – yippee!

Clea

Have you ever seen a great question on Answers that you wanted to tell the world about? Now you can! The Answers team is delighted to introduce a new feature that empowers you, the Answers community, to determine what questions are interesting enough to appear on the Answers homepage. This new feature is called “Stars.”

How does starring work?
You can star a question from either the action bar or from a question listing page. Star any question you think is high-quality and interesting, and that you would like to share. Questions that you star will appear in your starred list located on your public profile page. In addition, when you star a question your nickname will be added to the list of users who have starred that particular question. The list is located on the question’s page, and can be explored by all members of the community, allowing you to find people who are interested in similar topics and questions.

Starring questions lets the Answers community surface the best questions on the site. When a question is starred, it is automatically nominated to appear in the new “Popular” list on the front page of Answers (check it out!).
Answers’ Popular list is similar to Flickr’s “Interestingness” and the del.icio.us “Hotlist.” Sharing popular content has made these community experiences much better, and we believe our community will benefit from sharing interests with each other.

What’s next?

We are working on many other ways to use starring to further improve the experience on our site. For the next few releases, we will continue to focus on improving the quality of the site and are implementing many suggestions we received from the community.

One feature we are particularly excited about is the ability for Answerers to connect to each other. We will be adding additional functionality to make it easier for you to learn about and connect with other Answers community members in coming months.

We truly appreciate all the great knowledge that is created on Answers every day by all of you. We hope you will enjoy Stars as much as we do and appreciate your feedback below in the comments!

Yahoo!7 Answers Team