September 8, 2009 at 12:12 pm
A Categorical Change
Over the last few days, we’ve been rolling out a new design to the category pages that should help you find the questions you care about more quickly. Starting today, these changes will be a permanent feature in your Answers experience.
Here are some of the changes that we have made:
- Easier Category Navigation: We’ve moved the list of categories and subcategories to the top of the page instead of listing down the left-hand side. This should make it easier for you to move to a different category without needing to scroll down the page.
- More Space on the Page: Just like we did with the question page last year, we wanted to offer you more space in the category page by moving to a wider page design which is optimised for a higher screen resolution.
- A Leaderboard: Who doesn’t want to be famous? The right-hand side of the page now lists the top 10 answerers for the category or subcategory you are browsing. We wanted to give more prominence not only to the category leader, but to rest of the top contributing answerers as well.
- More Prominent Question List: You visit the category page to look for questions to answer, right? We’ve made the question list wider and more visible to help you get your answers in there faster.
- Sort by “Most Popular” Questions – We’ve added a “most popular” sort filter on the sidebar so you can see what the community is most interested in with just one click.
- Sticky Question Tabs – Open, resolved, and in voting tabs are now “sticky,” meaning that as you move between categories, your tab choice will persist for the session even as you vote for questions in different categories.
We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for you to use and participate in Answers, and we hope these changes continue to help you find the questions that may be most interesting to you.
As always (but especially when we change stuff on Answers) we would love to know what you think. So why don’t you check out the new category page and leave us a comment with your feedback?
Yahoo!7 Answers Team
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Personally I prefer the old format.
Yuck, I don’t like it. I noticed it a few days ago and thought something was wrong with my web browser…
The layout is horrible and the questions look squished and cluttered. It’s not easier to navigate, you have to scroll down the page to read the questions AND then you have to scroll right back to the top of the page to navigate the categories.
The leaderboard is a waste of space, I could care less who the top answerer is, all this feature is good for is bringing out more trolls.
I still don’t know why Y!A hasn’t bothered to allow users to favorite their top 5 ‘favorite’ categories. Surely this would be easier navigation.
I am concerned that those whose avatars appear on the Top 10 lists will become targets from trolls who want to up their place.
Nope, don’t like it at all.
Why do some folks always have to mess with things just for the sake of it.
Bring back the old style please.
I hate it. Most of my contacts hate it too. What was wrong with the old layout?
Im just starting to get used to it. My problem is not the layout. its the slow server!
I can handle the new layout, it’s the leaderboard I don’t like. All it’s doing is encouraging the trolls.
I know who the people are that I consider to be “top answerers” in the section that I frequent. It’s got nothing to do with the number of questions they answer, it’s all about the quality of the answers. Showing me who answers the most questions in a particular category means absolutely diddley squat to me.
Please, could you possibly consider an option by which we can “hide’ this leaderboard from our category page if we so desire. Thankyou.
I don’t understand why things have changed as the old way worked so well for so long for so many, and all the people I talk to hate the new layout.
Please go back to the way things were done before
Thanks
Barb
in all honesty i prefer the old format compared to the new format. the leaderboard is pretty unnecessary, i agree it does persuade a lot more trolls.
also the new format looks a bit tacky. the old format looked neater and a lot more sophisticated.
i’d really like to see the format changed back to it’s original state.
i too don’t like to see the top contributors in that section. diddly squat to me as well.
I agree with comments here re Leaderboard – that’s just creating targets – and its also not a true account of the genuine and informed answerers, I’ve alredy noticed the point scorers in there. I agree with another comment on here that askers need a way to let answerers know they have a qtn when they value responses from particular answerers. I suppose the current system of saving to a friends list does it but unfortunately trolls also use this to track new answerers without their being aware they are in fact trolls. Otherwise, I have no probs with new layout. I would like to see a separate seniors section though if that’s what they want. Cheers.