Yahoo!7 Answers Australia

Leonardo Dicaprio and Bar Refaeli – tying the knot?

This weekend many Australians will be kept in the dark – voluntarily of course! Sydney will be leading Earth Hour, encouraging people to turn all non essential electricity in their homes and businesses off between 7:30 and 8:30pm on Saturday night. The venture is all part of a push by the World Wildlife Fund to reduce the amount of toxic gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect – or global warming – by 5 percent in 2007. It is in everybody’s best interests to take part in initiatives like this, after all we’ve only got one planet!

As well as wanting the planet to be healthy – we want our own bodies to be healthy… but nearly two hundred people in western Sydney didn’t quite manage that this week after contracting salmonella poisoning from a small bread shop. The hospitals in the area all had their hands full coping with patients reporting to have the nasty symptoms of the illness.

In the celebrity world the biggest rumour at the moment is that Leonardo Dicaprio is engaged to his girlfriend of less than 18 months Bar Refaeli. The pair have been visiting Bar’s parents and word is the Leo popped the question, with the wedding already scheduled to take place in June. Judging from the number of questions about Leo on Yahoo!7 Answers there will be many with broken hearts upon hearing the news!

Have a great weekend!

Clea

Thanks to everyone for reporting issues you were seeing as a result of our Answers Network (BETA) release.

Here are the details on two of the problems we fixed in our latest update:

Avatar Rollover
In the last release, we included the option to add a person to your network through his or her avatar rollover. However, the avatar rollover would occasionally get stuck on the page. This update includes a change that will make the avatar rollovers close properly.

Edit my Info
After the release, some people were unable to edit their preferences from their profile page. This was due to the font size setting in certain browsers. We have now changed the link size to adjust automatically, so everyone will be able to access it without having to adjust the font size in their browser.

Thank you for all your feedback to date! We are actively fixing the bugs you report and will be addressing additional issues in another update. You can continue to report additional bugs, or discuss the latest fixes in our forum: http://suggestions.yahoo.com/?prop=answers.

Thanks,

Yahoo!7 Answers Team

I got a good laugh after reading the question asking “My darling daughter has painted her eyelids and lips with nail polish, how can I clean it off?” and was even further amused by the fact that it isn’t the only question of its kind posted under the Toddler and Preschooler category on Yahoo!7 Answers. It seems kids love to freak their parents out by getting into the nail polish.

The first years of raising children can be extremely difficult, like sailing through dangerous uncharted waters without a map. It gets easier with experience of course, but the first time round a lot of parents feel it would be more fun to sail a ship across open seas with no basic knowledge than to figure out how to get small children to eat their vegetables or how to put them in bed and convince them to stay there!

Advice from others is priceless, and hearing their experiences can make all the difference when dealing with the wailing, stamping and other dramatic behaviour that is characteristic of two year old temper tantrums. While each child is different, they are also very much the same, and can be encouraged in similar ways to give up their security blanket for good or to sit still on a long plane ride.

Why suffer as a parent when you can turn to Yahoo!7 Answers for help? If nothing else you can be comforted by the fact that there are other people in the world who have the same nail polish disaser stories as you!

Clea

I doubt there’s a nation on Earth that as a whole takes its swimming as seriously as Australia does. There probably aren’t many people in other countries settling down after their evening meal to watch the World Swimming Championships! It’s great that this year the competition is in Melbourne so we get to see the events live rather than reading about the results the next morning!

Since Ian Thorpe retired our champions are firmly on the female side of the competition, with gold medal finishes in the butterfly and the freestyle relay… and potentially more to come with Australian and championship records being broken before the swimmers even dive in for the finals. Those girls hardly even seem to break into a sweat! All eyes are now on Grant Hackett, who has been struggling a little and is in doubt to win the 800 metres freestyle – but then he has surprised us before! Win or lose, his achievements are to be admired.

Those sleek and speedy athletes are so inspiring – I am so encouraged to get into the pool as a form of exercise after witnessing the exciting atmosphere at the World Championships. I just need to remember the advice posted in Yahoo!7 Answers about getting water out of my ears after I’ve finished my laps!

Clea

South Australian Nikoru is this week’s featured user! Since joining Yahoo!7 Answers in May 2006 she has earned more than 2500 points and has been rewarded with best answer for 30 percent of her responses.

Nikoru is obviously a well rounded high achiever! Not only does she play both the saxophone and the flute but she has been on netball teams since the age of 12 and also enjoys volleyball and dancing. No longer residing in her hometown of Adelaide, Nikoru is this year living her dream by studying Veterinary Science at James Cook University in Townsville. Prior to that she completed a bachelor of Laboratory Medicine at the University of South Australia.

After having a look through Nikoru’s answers it is clear that she is able to help people out with their science questions, particularly when they involve human biology and questions about how and why our bodies function the way they do. She focused on antibiotics during her studies so is very keen to educate people about the importance of finishing prescriptions. Keen musician Nikoru also likes to help people with their saxophone questions… and I’m sure in the near future she’ll be helping people figure out why their pets are sick!

Nikoru thinks answers is great because you can’t always get correct or useful information on the web… and she loves to help people out.

Best of luck with your studies Nikoru and please keep helping us all on Answers!

Clea

Here at Yahoo!7 Answers we believe in communities sharing knowledge and helping each other out. In order to build such a community while preserving the spirit of Answers, we have a set of community guidelines for members to reference. We’ve received a lot of feedback from the community regarding the guidelines over the past few months, so we’ve revisited our guidelines in our latest update. We hope you will find it easier to digest, and we welcome further feedback. Here are some of the highlights:

- “Do” section – Most of you already know what you can’t do. But what can you do to be a valuable contributor to the community? This new section provides a couple of pointers.

- “Don’t” section – This section was meant to set the tone for the community. It’s not an exhaustive list by design, because we believe such a list creates a need to follow rules by the letter of the law, and not the spirit of the law. In general, if you are not committing crimes, cheating, or being obscene on Answers, you are ok.

Click here to read the newly updated community guidelines, and send us any suggestions in the forum.

In honour of current events, the Cricket category on Yahoo!7 Answers has been temporarily changed to Cricket World Cup 2007. The tournament started a little less than a week ago with 16 teams lining up for their chance at glory… or more glory in Australia’s case, and so far the results have been far from predictable. The shock of Pakistan’s suprising early exit from the competition after being defeated by first the West Indies then Ireland was quickly overshadowed by the sudden death of the team’s coach Bob Woolmer, and subsequent accusations of foul play.

Despite all the dramas the game must go on, and fans all over the world are discussing their team’s prospects on Answers, wondering who still has a chance of winning and eagerly anticipating upcoming matches. For those who are new fans of the sport Answers provides a good opportunity to learn about standard practices during the event and technical terms and of course there are lots of interesting history and trivia questions.

Will Sri Lanka defeat India this weekend and go on to glory? Can Australia get the better of South Africa and take out the series for the third time in a row? Only time will tell, but while you’re waiting for the matches to start you can always ask some Cricket World Cup questions on Answers!

Clea

All over the world, politicians are using Answers to get in touch with voters and to ask their opinions on important issues. In the United States Senator Hillary Clinton received an amazing response to her question about health care, and the President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam has also had an incredible number of answers from all over the world to his question relating to the global issue of terrorism.

With an election to be held this weekend in New South Wales, the Opposition Leader Peter Debnam has taken the opportunity to connect with voters and ask What specific improvements should the next government make in NSW?

So far there have been a number of really interesting and well thought out answers as people jump at the chance to let someone in government know how they think their state could be changed for the better. There’s plenty of time left to add your opinion and bring attention to an issue that you feel really needs to be addressed.

At only one year old, the Yahoo!7 Answers Yamster isn’t old enough to vote so doesn’t have an opinion about who should be in government, but he is looking forward to seeing more Australian politicians on Yahoo!7 Answers – and lots of input from users!

Clea

It is definitely about time we featured one of our fabulous female users! There are plenty on the leaderboard doing a great job at answering questions with informative and interesting responses.

So let’s swoop over to Melbourne where *The Anything Girl* has been busy answering questions and accruing a 47% best answer rate. What a stellar effort!

*The Anything Girl*’s excellent source of knowledge comes from her studies into linguistics – she completed a bachelor degree in 2005 and is about to submit a university honours thesis. Obviously after looking so deeply into the intricacies of language she finds it easy to answer questions posted about different dialects, the origins of words, how to pronounce difficult words, and all kinds of language trivia. *The Anything Girl* appreciates anyone who has a desire to learn the correct use of English and is happy to help them out.

When she’s not helping people with their spelling and grammar issues, *The Anything Girl* is busy at work in her role as a research report writer, or she is painting, camping in the Grampians or hanging out with her menagerie of pets – which include hermit crabs, tropical fish and a beagle named Sassy.

In her own words (heck she’s the expert!) –
“I reckon Yahoo!7 Answers rocks because it gives people the opportunity to get answers to their questions that otherwise may not be asked because the asker feels ashamed for wondering. I think you should never be ashamed to ask a question, you just might learn something. To quote an unknown source, “The only stupid question is the question you don’t ask.”

Hear! Hear!

Clea

It’s a big weekend this weekend for sport and cultural celebrations. If you’re in Sydney there’s the rare opportunity to walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday to celebrate the 75^th Anniversary of it being opened. That bridge just takes my breath away every time I see it – and I love reading all about the history of the structure and all the unusual and interesting facts.

Of course you may not be walking over the bridge or doing any walking at all if you’re sleeping off the St Patrick’s Day celebrations that will take place on Saturday. It just shows how many Irish have left their home country over the years when a day commemorating a saint and a crazy story about snakes is celebrated in pretty much every place on earth. It suprises me too how many people declare themselves to be Irish on this day – only to reveal after a few drinks that their great great grandmother was the last in the family to be a full blooded Paddy.

A bridge walk also might not happen if you’ve been staying up to take in the matches of the Cricket World Cup – televised live at a very awkward hour for Australians due to the cup being held in the West Indies this time round. There are THOUSANDS of questions on Yahoo!7 Answers speculating who the eventual winning team will be this year – and at least 16 different types of answers! Actually make that 15… I couldn’t find anyone willing to put their money on Canada!

Whatever you’re doing – enjoy your weekend!

Clea