Yahoo!7 Answers Australia

Possibly the world’s most famous romance novelist, Jackie Collins is making an appearance on Yahoo!7 Answers this week, to coincide with her visit to Australia and the release of her latest (and 25^th) book, Drop Dead Beautiful – The Continuing Adventures of Lucky Santangelo. The plot follows a scheming cast of characters – night club owners, beauty queens, film directors – you name it, and revolves around the opening of a multi-billion dollar hotel complex in Las Vegas… the perfect setting for scandal and intrigue! Jackie’s novels are perfect for adaptation to the big and small screen, but she maintains that her colourful list of rich and famous Hollywood characters are actually toned down compared to some of the people she encounters in real life!

Although Jackie’s books are known for being full of steamy and passionate affairs, her question is about just the opposite… and asks Why is it the consensus of opinion that when you get married, sex stops? There are already many answers offering their opinions – and many married users denying that this is true!

Jackie’s question is just like her writing – intriguing!

Yahoo!7 Answers Team

Since our editors spend so much time digging through Answers for quality Q&A to feature and often blog about what we find, we thought it might be a good idea to examine the individual Dos and Don’ts of the Yahoo!7 Answers Community Guidelines with you.So for this first post, let’s take a closer look at Do #1: Share what you know.

Personally, I’m a keen cyclist. I love to ride – on road or off, and I spend as much time as I can hitting the trails and cycle paths. This is a new passion for me so I also enjoy learning about the ins and outs of cycling – what products are on the market, which types of bikes are best and what each part of the bike is actually called so I am very grateful for users like Glenn B and scott.braden who are top contributors in the cycling category. If I ever need assistance with something I know that I will get an informative response from one of these users or from someone else within the answers community. As I learn more too, I will be able to share what I know with others who are interested in the sport of cycling.

Answerers with specialized interests, experience and in many cases training spend countless hours sharing their knowledge with others in our community. While sharing what you know is a must, it is also important to make sure you don’t share anything that puts your answer in violation of the Community Guideline Don’ts. Violations for this typically occur when someone lets their personal agendas get in the way of the community spirit of sharing knowledge, so re-reading through the guidelines as a refresher might not be a bad idea.

Hopefully, this will help clarify some of our Community Guidelines — we plan to continue explorations like these in future posts. Let us know what you think!

Clea

Photo by invad3r.

Hands up if you hate ants! Even the cleanest household can end up overrun by the pesky little creatures, who are able to burrow their way through concrete and wriggle inside the lids of jars to get to a source of food. They invade our houses even when there isn’t a nearby box of biscuits or pot of honey and getting rid of them is practically impossible!

However when you put aside the fact that they are pests, ants are actually one of the most amazing creatures on the planet. They are able to work together to find food, if they were human they would be classed as superheroes because of their amazing strength and they are incredibly resourceful, even consuming their dead as a source of protein! The work together on little sleep to provide for their whole colony, especially for their Queen, who they remain loyal to until the end.

Many people come to Yahoo!7 Answers looking for solutions to their ant problems, or just for explanations as to why they are so persist-ant (teehee). In fact there are so many related questions we almost need a sub-category called … wait for it… Antswers!

See you next week!

Clea

Despite the recent onset of cooler weather and the fact that it is a national holiday, as the sun rises tomorrow many Australians will have already been out of bed for some time, and will be braving the cold or any rain that may be falling in order to spend a few moments honouring the contributions made by Australians at war at dawn ceremonies all over the country.

The story of the Anzacs has been retold for more than 90 years, and added on to that are tales from the trenches of the Second World War, from the jungles of Vietnam, from the rough terrain of the Middle East and from the many other places around the world where Australian soldiers, sailors, pilots and nurses have defended our way of life.

Both Australia and New Zealand will stop in the morning to remember the fallen, and to honour those still amongst us, but after the Ode has been read and the final strains of the Last Post die away we will appreciate the fact that we do live in a free country in the way we do best – by getting together with friends and family, by enjoying an Anzac biscuit or three and by playing a few games of two up with a beer.

Have a good day!

Clea

Prior to this week the handful of questions on Yahoo!7 Answers involving Virginia Tech revolved around the quality of its courses, how hard it is to get accepted as a student and whether or not the football team was going to make it into the finals.

Sadly, the mention of the small US college now conjures up images of violence and devastation after a lone gunman attacked and killed 32 others before taking his own life. Searching for Virginia Tech on Answers now brings more than a thousand results, as people try to make some kind of sense out of what happened. The issue of gun control has been opened yet again and the debate is hotly contested – some people argue that a culture where guns are accepted as normal drives these terrible incidents, others say that if each individual had the right to carry a concealed weapon then perhaps a student in that classroom would have been able to defend themselves and their classmates.

Even spiritual philosopher Dr Deepak Chopra has joined Answers, wondering if this tragedy could in any way have been prevented. You are welcome to share your thoughts and to read the opinions of others.

Clea

Less smog is just one of the benefits of a reduction in carbon emissions!

As a company, Yahoo!7 will be helping the planet by doing everything possible to become carbon neutral in 2007 and to encourage the rest of the community to follow suit. This is really encouraging news as the forecasts for global climate conditions over the next fifty years are very frightening – unless we all work together to change the way we treat the earth.

This plan for Yahoo! has come right from the top… Co-founder David Filo wants every office around the world to make an effort towards reducing carbon emissions this year – and he’s asking for your help to make it happen. If you have a suggestion on how the Yahoo!7 office and indeed all other Yahoo! headquarters can become carbon neutral then just go to David’s question and do what you do best – answer!

We can all work towards reducing our carbon footprints, just look at the phenomenal effort that was made for Earth Hour, when people switching their lights off for just one hour resulted in a 10.2% drop in energy use across the city of Sydney. Making a difference to reduce the impact of climate change is just as easy as unplugging electric products at the wall when you’re not using them, or making sure you turn out the lights when you leave a room at home or in the office.

As Kermit said, “it’s not easy being green,” but with a little willingness, creativity and research, it’s not so difficult to give it a try. Any attempt counts toward pitching in for a good cause: our future and the future of the planet we share. It seems that more and more people are making an effort lately – there is a lot of green-minded questions and responses on Answers, which is likely why David Filo turned to this community for help to begin with.

So what is your suggestion? How should Yahoo! go carbon neutral?

Clea

The Big Top circus tent used to really thrill me as a kid… I got over an early fear of clowns to really enjoy the spectacle and all the amazing performers. With the meteoric rise in popularity of modern circuses like Cirque Du Soleil I thought the old school travelling shows had become a thing of the past so I was pleasantly surprised when I passed a field full of Shetland ponies on my way home the other night, calmly grazing between acts of the traditional circus that is visiting my area.

In today’s hectic world we all dream of running away and joining the circus from time to time! But instead of practicing your juggling at home in secret and then stealing away in the dead of night it is probably a better idea to sign up for one of the schools that are specifically set up to encourage the abilities of tightrope walkers and acrobats who feel compelled to be shot out of cannons.

Circuses have certainly come a long way since the freak shows and animal cruelty of the past, and they have managed to evolve enough to remain entertaining while still maintaining their traditional appeal.

Now where are my juggling balls?

Clea

A tsunami warning even reached Australian beaches

The tsunami on the Solomon Islands over the Easter break made us all shudder as we recollected the events just after Christmas 2004, and reminded us that the danger in areas of South East Asia of another such catastrophic event is always prevalent. The subsequent concerns that the Australian coastline was affected really brought home the fact that there is a possibility a similar disaster may occur on our own shores.

There was also a very small earthquake in the NSW town of Wollongong this week! Measuring only 3.1 on the Richter scale, it is unlikely anyone would have felt more than a slight tremor, but again it is a reminder that mother nature can be cruel. In Australia we are lucky that there are no significant fault lines – in many other countries families keep earthquake survival kits in their backyards and are regularly warned to be prepared for a great big ‘shake’.

Speaking of survival, there have been headlines this week about bushwalkers going missing in parts of Australia. They set off for a hike over the long weekend and all too quickly realised how a couple of wrong turns can set you completely off course and result in an extra night spent outdoors. One walker is still missing after failing to return home as planned on Monday. It is very important to be prepared before embarking on a hiking trip in order to ensure your own survival and to make it easier for rescuers to find you if you do become ost in the bush.

Have a safe weekend!

Clea

Many of you have noticed that Answers was updated recently as part of our continued efforts to respond to your feedback and to make the site as fun and easy to use as possible. As an editor working on Answers, I get to peek behind the curtain while our engineers and product managers are hard at work on fixes, bugs, and features and I wanted to share with you a glimpse of what the team is working on. Here are some of the newest features fixed during last week’s update.

Refining “Top Contributors”

The team has taken a lot of the feedback into consideration regarding “Top Contributor” badges. One of the criticisms that really resonated was the need for the Best Answer percentage to be weighted more heavily in the selection criteria, so we’ve applied a tweak requiring a higher percentage in order to earn one of these badges. We are aware of the other issues the community has with the “Top Contributor” badge and we’re still considering other changes for future updates.

Speedier Troll Deletions
Our Customer Care Team is thrilled with a recent enhancement to our abuse tools that allows for multiple troll deletions at once. This helps them fend off troll attacks all at once – effectively removing abusive content from the site at a quicker pace, and at a much larger scale so that the community will have less junk to filter through on their own. The entire team is dedicated to finding bigger and better ways to improve content quality on the site, and this is yet another tool to help us achieve this goal.

Disappearing 360 Images
Many Answerers use photos that they’ve uploaded to their 360 pages as their avatars on Answers. Unfortunately, a bug was preventing Answers from surfacing 360 images as user profiles in some cases. We’ve heard everyone’s woes, and believe us, we feel your pain. As editors we were also dealing with missing images when programming Q&A on the Answers front page. Thankfully our engineers have come up with a fix that will increase the reliability of 360 photos appearing on Answers profiles where they belong.

The team is continuing to work hard on tackling the issues you are reporting so you can count on some very cool updates down the road. Thank you for continuing to make Answers the thriving community it is!

Clea

After the barrage of questions relating to the Easter Bunny and the origins of the season last week I found myself spending some time in the Mythology and Folklore category of Yahoo!7 Answers, which is highly entertaining to browse through – if you’re not easily scared!

There are some particularly creepy tales of supernatural experiences and some accounts from users who claim to have regressed into their past lives after being hypnotised. Whether you believe it or not – you can’t help but feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you look through some of the answers to questions seeking stories of ghostly encounters.

The category also allows for users to ask for explanations about superstitions such as the discomfort involving Friday the 13th, or to get some advice on how to further their knowledge of tarot cards and their meanings. It is also interesting to read through and have a look at the questions concerning other cultures, their deities and the customs and beliefsthat have been passed through generations.

If you’re intrigued by things that go bump in the night, or in the background of various folk stories and old wives tales it’s a great category to have a look at – just make sure your nightlight is plugged in!

Clea