Yahoo!7 Answers Australia

Following my previous blog posts The Taste of Autumn and Food and Drink Month on Answers, our experts in the Food & Drink category have embraced their inner foodie and shared their favourite recipes on our open questions.

Before I reveal our menu and the winners, I want to thank you all for your participation and great answers posted during the last week and-a-half. You’ve been really respectful of the community guidelines but, at the same time, creative with original recipes. It was a real pleasure to discover your ideas.

Without further ado, I’d like to introduce our Autumn menu and our winners!

Entrée (starter)

• Bruschetta with a red wine vinegar, garlic and olive oil dressing submitted by music_is_life14 -Best Answer-
• Malt vinegar marinated Bluff Oysters with white pepper submitted by Hman (Response #2 selected by me)
• Soupe au Pistou (Pistou Soup) submitted by AJ in Exile (Response #3 selected by me)
• Crispy noodle salad submitted by Bri (Response #5 selected by me)
• Field Mushrooms with lemon & olive oil, served with a small salad submitted by Cherie M (Response #6 selected by me)

Main Course

• Ale, Barley and Sausage Stew submitted by almarj70 -Best Answer-
• Potato Salad with onion, celery, dill pickles and mayo with brown mustard and pickle juice submitted by barbara via Joanne’s question on potato salad -Best Answer-
• Chicken Cacciatore with Spaghetti submitted by BullyH (Response #6)
• Steamed Salmon on a bed of spinach with scallops and asparagus submitted by *Jellz* (Response #9)
• Slow cooked pork belly in a smoky bbq mango sauce served on a sweet potato mash with blanched sugar snap peas submitted by Stiffler (Response #16)

Dessert

• Call Me Guilty Pumpkin Cheesecake submitted by AJ in Exile -Best Answer-
• Tiramisu submitted by zcapan (Response #6)
• Apple Crumble submitted by almarj70 (Response #7)
• Microwaved Bananas with Hokey Pokey Ice Cream submitted by BullyH (Response #9)
• Lemon Meringue Kisses submitted by Sonia (Response #11)

Once again, congratulations to our head chefs Joanne, barbara, music_is_life14, almarj70 and AJ in Exile. And also congratulations as well to everyone else who won

The best answers received 200 points for their appetising dishes, whereas the other participants I selected above received 100 points each for their answers.

Please keep in mind that the Food & Drink category is full of great recipes from the community. We’re pretty sure you’ll able to find what you’re looking for in the existing questions or discover new culinary experiences as we did during this operation.

What is your favourite entrée, main or dessert? Do you know how to cook it? Please share your thoughts in this blog post or ask a question about it

Again, many thanks for all your contributions!

Kate
Community Manager

It’s time for your inner foodie to shine!

Throughout March, we are celebrating the Food & Drink category on Yahoo!7 Answers by creating a menu of Autumn food with help from you!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far, our mouths have been watering endlessly

We’ve decided to extend the questions until Tuesday, so you have the weekend to find your favourite recipes and share them with us. To enter, simply answer one of these

• Entrée (starter): What is your perfect recipe for an entrée or starter?
• Main course: What is your recipe for the perfect main course?
• Dessert: How would you prepare your perfect dessert?

On Tuesday, we will select the best answer for each of these questions. As a reward, the user chosen as the best answer will receive 200 points. But that’s not all! We will be choosing 4 other responses from each question as well, they will get 100 points reward for their involvement. So get answering

Kate
Community Manager

A few days ago, we announced the celebration of Food and Drink during March.

To do this, we are creating a menu of food from community contributions, suitable for consumption during the cooler months of Autumn. Unlike most of the world where it’s now warming up for Spring, we are the complete opposite, with Autumn being the current season down here in Australia and over in New Zealand.

The menu will contain the best recipes for cooking an entrée (starter), main course and a dessert. These recipes will come from yourself and the other foodies in the Food & Drink category on Yahoo!7 Answers, it’s your time to shine!

Our first request for recipes comes from Joanne:

• What are the ingredients, other than potatoes, in your favourite potato salad recipe?

If you have an amazing recipe for potato salad, be sure to share it on her question above!

And now for the other questions…

• Entrée (starter): What is your perfect recipe for an entrée or starter?
• Main course: What is your recipe for the perfect main course?
• Dessert: How would you prepare your perfect dessert?

If you have a favourite dish or recipe to share for any of the above, answer away!

Next Friday, we will select the best answer for each of these questions. As a reward, the user chosen as the best answer will receive 200 points. But that’s not all! We will be choosing 4 other responses from each question as well, they will get 100 points reward for their involvement. So get answering

Kate
Community Manager

Over the past few weeks we’ve made several exciting new changes to the overall Answers experience including changes to the look and feel of the site, as well as a new search experience for Yahoo!7 Answers.

While these changes have taken place, many of you have had questions about where we have relocated your favourite features, and what changes lie ahead. Below you’ll find some of the most commonly asked questions and their answers.

Q: Previously, I could click on “My Profile” to go straight to my profile page. This link is gone—how do I get to this page now?
A: To easily access your profile page, you can either click on your name next to the “Hello” message, or, click on the “My Activity” tab to jump straight to your profile.

Q: Below my name there’s now an “invite your friends” link—what does this do?”
A:   Clicking on the “Invite your friends” link allows you to easily invite any of your friends to join you on Yahoo!7 Answers.  From this page, you can easily enter in the email addresses of your family and friend and encourage them to join you on Answers—that way if you’ve recently asked a question on Answers and think your Aunt Sally may know the Answer but know she’s not on Answers, you can easily get her on board, and, get her to answer your question!

Please note that if you’re a Level 1 member, instead of seeing “invite your friends” you’ll instead see a link reading, “What are points and levels?,” encouraging you to learn more about Answers. For members who are level 2 and higher, you’ll be seeing this link added in under the “About” tab in the near future.

Q: How do I see my suggested questions?
A: If you have suggested questions, they’ll show up on your homepage as they did before. Currently, we don’t have a message in place that tells you “there are no suggested questions available at this time” but we’re looking to add this back in the near future.

Q: How do I see my recent activity details?
A: To see your recent activity details, just click on the “My Activity” tab—from here, you can see your activity summary, your activity details, as well as your questions, answers, starred questions and your watchlist.

Also from this page, you can easily click on the “Edit My Preferences” link to edit the content found within your Answers profile, or, if you’re elsewhere on the Answers site, just hover back on the “My Activity” tab and click on the “Edit My Preferences” link to be taken to the same edit screen.

Q: Now that you’ve changed the look and feel of Answers, what’s next?
A: We always have a few tricks up our sleeve, so be on the lookout for new things heading your way. In the meantime, we still love hearing your thoughts about the new homepage and the changes to search, so please keep the constructive feedback coming!

If you have additional “how-to” questions about the new homepage or search, or, just want to tell us what you think, please leave a comment below or stop by the Suggestion Board!

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh! (Happy St. Patrick’s Day in Irish Gaelic)

St. Patrick’s Day… the one day of the year, the entire world becomes Irish!

For many, March 17th simply means wearing green and lots of Guinness whilst celebrating with friends and loved ones. For others, including the millions of Catholics worldwide, the day takes on more of a religious significance.

This got me thinking, what is the history behind St. Patrick’s Day and how did it move from a being a secular day to a celebration embraced by the world? Perhaps you can help me out:

• What is the origin of St. Patrick’s Day?

My own family are of Irish background, I myself am both only a few generations old Irish and descended from Irish stock, harking back to the days of convict settlement in Australia.

The photo to the left is the home my Great, Great Grandparents lived in, it is still owned and occupied by members of my family to this day!

We mark the day by attending mass, wearing green and spending time with our friends and loved ones. We celebrate life and are generally thankful for the blessings of family and good friends.

Do you have any particular traditions for St. Patrick’s Day? Leave a comment below or on the question above

Kate
Community Manager

There’s just a little over an hour left to get your open questions in for our celebration of the Food & Drink category, happening throughout March and April.

For details, please visit our post on The Taste of Autumn!

Good luck!

Kate
Community Manager

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!