Yahoo!7 Answers Australia

Following our cool new Yahoo!7 Answers feature that allows you to share your Answers content with your Facebook friends, it was logical to continue our collaboration with the social network. You can now become a fan of our official Facebook fan page!

To join our friends on Facebook, you just need to do the following:

1. Sign in or up to Facebook
2. Go on our Facebook fan page
3. Once you’re on the official fan page, just click on the button « I like » available at the top to become one of our fans

Well done, you’re now one of our Facebook friends:

After that you can also find for Yahoo! Answers in the search bar OR you can click on the link to go directly on the fan page. You can find the Yahoo!7 Australia Answers team here.

On this page, we’re going to show you the latest blog updates, open questions from the team, partners and even some from the community. But keep your eyes peeled because we are preparing some other surprises for you too…

If you’re not totally addicted to Facebook (it happens), you can still follow us on Twitter:

Once you have joined us on Facebook, why not tell us what you think on the Forum or leave your comments here, on the blog.

Kate
Community Manager

Following last week’s changes to Search and the Fans/Contacts system we now have a few more changes to share with you…

Edit My Preferences page

To keep public information and your personal settings separate we’ve made further changes on the `Edit my preferences` pages.

As with the previous preference page you can still add your photo or avatar from here or change your screen name which will both be used across your Yahoo! experience.  We’ve made this page a little lighter to view by splitting out how you will be seen on Answers from your personal preferences on Privacy and Communications.

The Privacy and Communications tab gives you control to receive specific notifications such as when ‘someone becomes your fan’ or when ‘there are new questions for My Saved Searches’ – and whether you allow fans at all.

Hiding your profile

You may notice there is no longer the option to choose whether you `Show link to my Profile Page`.  This previously controlled whether you linked directly to your Pulse profile on Yahoo!

This setting is now controlled across all Yahoo! properties from the `Privacy` settings on the Settings page on Pulse.

A few weeks ago, we announced that we were conducting “The World Interviews David Beckham“, live and exclusive on Yahoo!.

We gave you the chance to participate, by posing the question: “If you could ask David Beckham one question, what will you ask him and why?“. The winner would receive a football signed by David Beckham as well as the opportunity to have their question presented during the interview. How cool is that?

We are pleased to announce that mum of 3 j’s has won with her question: How do you and Victoria cope as parents? Are you hands on like the rest of us or do you rely on Nanny’s to raise the children. Do your kids realise how famous their parents are?.

There’s a box of goodies on the way to her in the mail, along with the jabulani ball signed by David.

mum of 3 j’s question was also chosen to be included in the Yahoo! interview that was streamed live across the world last night. As it was the middle of the night for Australia, our colleagues in Singapore kindly asked the question on behalf of Yahoo!7 and the Australian Answers Community.

You can catch mum of 3 j’s question at approximately 28:25 into the interview. David talked for quite some time in response! If you wish to view a larger version, please visit Yahoo!7 Sport.

Once again, congratulations to mum of 3 j’s! We hope you enjoy your football and the interview

Kate
Community Manager

Many of you have voiced concerns about the misuse of the Fans and Contacts feature.

Firstly, we’re aware of how strongly many of you feel about this and we’ve heard and taken on board your feedback: we’re sorry we’ve taken so long to address a problem that may have affected your experience of Answers.

However, as of today, we are now making improvements to how Contacts and Fans work on Answers to ensure that your experience on the site is better.

In addition to Contacts and Fans we’ll make some changes to the voting limits.  First of all… let’s cover Fans and Contacts:

What will my Fans see?

Anyone can become your fan by adding you as a ‘contact’.  Once someone has added you as a contact:

• Fans will get latest updates when you ask questions in the `From my Network` tab
• Email notification when you ask a question

If you don’t want to allow fans at all – you can set this in your Preferences page.

If you don’t want a certain member to be aware of this information you can block them from the My Network page.

If your Q&A and Answers network are marked as ‘My Contacts Only’ on your ‘Preferences’ page, Fans will not gain access to view your content or your network.

Want to know when someone has become your fan?  You can activate a notification in your profile page to receive an email when someone becomes your fan.

What will my Contacts see?

Contacts are those people you choose to add and you will be sharing your content with them.

Once you add a contact they will:

See your questions and answers

• Get an update on the homepage in the `From my Network` tab when you ask a question
• Have visibility of your Answers Network

Everyone likes to receive the kudos of having new ‘Fans’ of their content and this change will keep the overall control of ‘who-sees-what’ with you.

Keep watching this space – this will be just the first step in changes we have planned for how Contacts and Fans should work and the benefits they bring as we continue to make this feature work for YOU.

Changes to voting limits

We’ve noticed that many you in the Answers community are very avid voters!

To help you continue to feed this passion we’ve now increased the daily limits for the number of votes you can cast.  The new maximum daily are:

• Level 1: 25 votes per day
• Level 2: 50 votes per day
• Level 3: 75 votes per day
• Level 4: 100 votes per day
• Level 5: 125 votes per day
• Level 6: 150 votes per day
• Level 7: 200 votes per day

So what’s stopping you?  Get voting!

Well, yesterday was a pretty special day, as David Beckham was interviewed by the world! Seeing him respond to questions from Answers contributors from Australia and around the world was amazing.

He came across as a really genuine guy, speaking openly about low points in his life, how he met and first kissed Victoria and what their  “date nights” are like.  Despite his global susperstar status, his love for football came across repeatedly.

We could probably go on at length about what it was like to be part of this global spectacle but honestly, you just need to watch the video:

If you wish to watch the “The World Interviews David Beckham” live, it will be at approximately 11:30pm AEST (Sydney time) this evening.

You can view it here: http://game.penaltyshootout.yahoo.com/beckham/

You can participate by asking him question via Facebook here or via Twitter by using the tag #YDB on your tweets!

We hope you enjoy this evening’s interview!

Kate
Community Manager

After receiving your feedback on Search within Answers we’re pleased to announce some major changes to the Search experience on Yahoo! Answers.

We’ve made quite a few changes to the search functionality, so to make navigation a bit easier, we’ve broken things down for you by section, so let’s get started.

The NEW Answers search page

Let’s take you through some of the changes you’ll see:

1. We’ve now added the ability to sort results by relevance, by newest/oldest, and by fewest/most answers directly to the top of your results.

You can continue to use the left hand navigation to customise your search and we’ve made some amends to these dropdowns:

2. Added filtering by ‘Tied questions’ to the Question Status dropdown
3. Added a new dropdown to filter by ‘Number of Answers’
4. Changed the time options available in the Date Submitted dropdown to give you a greater range of options and to include a filter for the ‘last 24 hours’
5. Next to the Search Answers button you’ll notice we’ve re-added ‘Advanced Search’ so let’s take a deeper look at that next…

Advanced Search

Advanced Search is back and gives you even more options for customising your search.

Advanced Search allows you to filter your search using specific parameters in order for you to receive results that are more accurate.  These filters are saved and added to your saved searches.

You can filter your search by using the following:

• Keyword match in: All Q&A, Questions or Best Answers.
• Category
• Location: All English questions or AU questions only.
• Question Status: Open Questions, Questions in Voting, Tied Questions or Resolved Questions
• Number of Answers
• Date Submitted

You can enter certain Boolean search terms in ‘Keywords’.  These are: AND, ANDNOT, AND, OR

Not sure about Boolean?  Then use the ‘All these words’, ‘any of these words’, ‘exact phrase’ or ‘don’t include these words’ boxes and we’ll insert the Boolean commands for you.

My Saved Searches

Many of you make use of the ‘Saved Search’ option to help you quickly find content around your specialist subjects. We’ve now enhanced this feature so from the new My Saved Search page you can now:

• Save up to 10 searches. The main pane displays the selected search in real time.  The last sorting option you use is saved the next time you log in.
• Edit your searches to keep them up-to-date.
• Delete your searches when you no longer need them.
• Drag and drop to arrange your Saved Searches to get the most used ones at the top of the list.
• Manage these searches from the new Saved Search page by editing or deleting.
• Get your Saved Searches delivered as a daily digest email (see below).
• Have the Yahoo! Trending Topic of the day included in your search results. You’ll notice one search already there which you didn’t search for.  We’ve given you a ‘trending search’ to start. This is a keyword based on what is trending from Yahoo! Search. It changes on a daily basis depending on what people are talking about on the web. The trending search can be deleted to give you full control of the 10 searches you save. However, beware that once you delete the trending search it will be removed forever.

All your old saved searches will be migrated to the new My Saved Search so you might have 2 searches waiting for you.

To give you an incentive to test this feature out – as soon as you have 3 Saved Searches on your Saved Search page we will give you 20 points!  However, this will only be awarded once.

How do I save my search?

You can save your search from the following areas:

• The Search homepage
• Advanced Search page
• My Saved Search page

Digest Email

We’ll soon be launching a new Digest Email that will send you an email once a day containing the top 3 questions from each of your Saved Searches.  The top 3 questions are sorted by the settings you save on your My Saved Searches page, so if you only want ‘in voting’ questions then those are the questions that will be delivered to you.  This will make your Answers experience more efficient since questions will be sent directly to your inbox!

For now, tick the box if you want to receive these emails and we’ll start sending out in the next few days.

We’ve left the decision on whether you want to receive this email to you. You can opt in to this email by checking the box at the bottom of the Advanced Search page or from you’re the Privacy and Communication tab on the ‘Edit My Preferences’ page.

For those of you who bookmark your searches – we’ve respected this and it will still work.  But why not use Saved Search instead of Bookmarks and get the daily email as well as the bonus points?

We’d love to hear your feedback on the new features to search. Leave us a comment here on the blog or on the feedback thread on the Suggestion board. We trust you will find the new Search experience to be a useful addition to your Answers experience!

The city of New York and one of the world’s most recognisable baseball teams, the New York Yankees, have plunged into mourning with the death of team owner – George Steinbrenner.

It is reported that Steinbrenner, aged 80, suffered a massive heart attack at home in Florida and subsequently passed away.

Steinbrenner, along with a group of private investors, bought the troubled New York Yankees back in 1973. Under his watch it has grown to one of the most successful baseball franchises and renowned the world over.

“Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing,” Steinbrenner once said.

Willing to spend heavily to sign star players, he demanded results and got them as the Yankees won seven World Series titles and 11 American League pennants since he bought the fabled club in 1973. The Yankees won their record 27th World Series title in 2009.

“He took, literally, a dying franchise and turned it into arguably the greatest franchise in American sports and along the way probably saved baseball,” said Sal Galatioto, president of Galatioto Sports Partners, a sports banking firm that has done business with the Yankees.

“It’s a great loss to the Yankee players and fans,” said Easwall Semper, 65, a lifelong fan wearing a Yankees cap in midtown Manhattan. “He was a fair man. He had his own ways.”

Source: Yahoo!7 Sports

Whilst I am not personally a Yankees fan, lifelong Phillies for me, one definitely has to respect his business acumen and successes as an owner. He was also well known for supporting numerous charities. No one can deny the achievements of the Yankees under his control have contributed to the continued prosperity and growth of baseball in America and throughout the world, at both professional and junior levels.

This brings us to the following question:

• What is your favourite memory of the New York Yankees with George Steinbrenner at the helm and why?

Leave a comment on the question above or leave a comment below!

Kate
Community Manager

Since we first made changes to the Search experience on Answers in March we have received extensive feedback from the Answers community.  We’re pleased to say we’ve been incorporating this feedback in developing some exciting new changes to how Search works – with some cool new functions to help you get the best out of this feature which we will be unveiling later this week.

However, before you can see the future of Search on Answers, we need to take you back to the past… just for a few days!  For Technical reasons we have to rollback to an older version of the Search page before we can add code to introduce new features – it’s a bit like when the Yamster’s wheel gets stuck.  We have to roll it back a little before it can go forward  again!

As from Monday we’ll be using the old URL structure on Search pages.

Here are the impacts and how you can work around this until we get the new page live:

1. If you’ve bookmarked your Searches you will get the error page as the URL will no longer be valid.  You don’t need to delete these bookmarks, they will be valid again shortly.  In the interim you will need to go to the Search page and enter your search again.  This will return you the full set of results.

2. If you currently edit the Search URL to use &orderby=+date (to sort by most recent) and &orderby=-date (to sort by oldest) you will need to use the previous parameters.  These are:

• Instead of &orderby=+date  use &s=+date
• Instead of &orderby=-date use &s=-date

We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause, but we can assure you it will be very temporary and that you will really value the new Search functions we’re launching in a few days!

World of Warcraft… Derided by some yet enjoyed by millions worldwide.

When Activision Blizzard launched their groundbreaking MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) World of Warcraft, a sequel to the already successful PC gaming Warcraft franchise back in late 2004, they were an overnight sensation. At last there was a game that appealed to gamers and non-gamers alike, bringing them all together in the world of Azeroth.

Also famous for such franchises as Starcraft and Diablo, Acitivision Blizzard is no stranger to being in the spotlight, this week being no exception.

Blizzard announced on Tuesday that it would begin introducing the “Real ID” feature to its official bulletin boards and the move to require real first and last names has drawn hundreds of comments, most of them negative.

Blizzard said in a blog post that the change was intended to “help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.”

“The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players,” it said.

“However, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild,” Blizzard said.

“Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before.”

Source: Yahoo!7 News

This has sparked uproar amongst players across the globe, concerned about privacy and protecting their real life identities. Threads on the subject on various game forums maintained by Activision Blizzard are in the thousands, posted by players either for or against the upcoming changes. Opinions are divided, but the majority of the issues raised by players appear to be centred on the safety of children and the sharing of personal and identifiable information, whilst others call for people to quit their respective games. Activision Blizzard have responded to the concerns, pointing out that all accounts come with parental controls and ultimately, if one does not wish personal information shared, do not post on the forums.

This brings us to the following question:

• Would issues about Activision Blizzard’s changes to their forums make you cancel your Warcraft account & why?

What do you think; will all these issues make you quit Warcraft? Why? Share your views with the community now on the question above or by leaving a comment below!

Kate
Community Manager