Yahoo!7 Answers Blog Australia

To continuing improving your Yahoo!7 Answers experience we are introducing a few small changes this week…

Changing time to choose a Best Answer

Based on your feedback to be able to resolve a question quicker, we have now reduced the wait time to choose a best answer from 4 hours to 1 hour. If you now receive multiple responses within an hour you can select one of those as your Best Answer, or choose to put the question to vote at this earlier stage.

The full lifecycle of a question won’t change – questions will still be open for 4 days and up to maximum of 8 days if you extend the expiration. This change gives you the option to resolve earlier or put to vote earlier. If you take no action to resolve or extend the question, the question will automatically go to vote for the Best Answer.

Optional Preview screen when answering questions

Many of you have commented that to you’d prefer an answering experience without having to see your response on the Preview page first. We are now able to offer this…

If you are signed-in with your Answers account and have answered at least one question before then when submitting your answer you can choose to Submit your response immediately without going to the Preview page first. We’ve kept the Preview page too, so you can still see how your response will look before publishing it.

What makes Yahoo!7 Answers unique is the avid involvement of the community it is YOU that provides the content so continue to ask, answer and vote!

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.

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!

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!

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!

We are about to blow out the candles and celebrate like we would have if NSW had won this year’s State of Origin – because exactly four years ago, Yahoo!7 Answers was born!

The best thing about our anniversary is that, since our beginnings as a small site with big aspirations, we have had amazing achievements. Not only did we recently receive our 1 billionth answer, but we have formed a strong community of users who share their knowledge and experience. For that reason, we want to thank all the people of different ages, countries and opinions who have made this possible: thank you for your contributions!

We know it’s not all peaches and cream, and we are aware that there is always room for improvement. The Yahoo!7 Answers homepage has undergone some important changes and we have recently added a Facebook integration that allows you to share your answers with your friends in that social network, but there is still a long way to go. What do you think?

• What changes would you like to see on Yahoo!7 Answers?

Anniversaries are thoughtful moments, ideal for reflecting upon our mistakes and growing up in every aspect of our lives. They are also a good reason to celebrate and remember the past, so we want to know:

• What has been your best experience on Yahoo!7 Answers?

I’d have made a cake, but I’m a rather messy cook – check out the cakes I made for the Yahoo!7 Mail & Messenger celebrations last year to see why.

Celebrate our birthday with us and (leaving modesty aside) don’t forget to leave your messages of congratulations here!

Kate
Community Manager

UPDATE: 15th June. All issues below are now fixed. Thanks for  your patience on this!

Our latest release has unfortunately released a few bugs into the system which we are working to fix as soon as possible.

So what’s not working?

• Extending questions:  When you extend a question the updated number of days until expiry is not reflected on your question.  It remains at the same number of days.  Don’t worry, the question has been extended and will stay open for the extended duration…. it just doesn’t show the correct number on the question page.  As an impact of this, you may see open questions which say `Question period ended`.  This is purely where the number of days counter has hit zero but the question has been extended.

• Mails are not being sent when you receive a new answer to your question.  You will still receive other emails, such as when your contacts ask questions.

• Our External API is not currently working.  If you make use of this tool on your website you may want to join this Yahoo! Developer Group to keep up with the latest information on this:  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ydn-answers/

We’re working hard to get these outstanding issues resolved and will update this post when we iron out the bugs…

-Yahoo! Answers Team

Starting on Thursday, you will notice a cool new Yahoo! Answers feature that will allow you to share your Answers content with your Facebook friends! This means your friends on Facebook can now help you answer your questions if you choose to share them. Your Facebook friends can also join Yahoo! Answers and connect with our amazing community to have the many questions they have answered.

What are the benefits?

One of the many advantages of social networking sites is having the ability to connect with thousands of people. Linking your Answers account with your Facebook account increases the number of people that can answer your questions! Some of the benefits are:

1. Make it easier for your non-Answers friends to answer your questions if you choose to share them beyond Answers
2. If you choose to share your great answers with your Facebook friends too then they will see your answers right at the top of the list when coming to Answers from Facebook

Control options:

On the ‘Preview’ page you’ll see the check-boxes for where you want to share your questions and answers to. The setting you choose here will be the default for all of your content but you have the option to change this with every posting. This gives you full control over which info you want to share with your friends and those questions you want to ask only to the Answers community.

Things to keep in mind:

If you do decide to share your Answers activity with your friends on Facebook, keep in mind that your Answers screen name will be visible. Your Answers activity will be associated with your Facebook identity and vice versa, which means your Facebook friends will be able to see all your Answers activity (including past activity). If your friends on Facebook ‘like’ your question, their contacts will be able to see this activity too.

Remember, more visibility to your questions means more answers from a wider range of contacts so we hope you will find the new Facebook integration a useful addition to your Answers experience!

Once you have started sharing your Answers and Facebook accounts, “tell us what you think” on the Forum or leave your comments here, on the blog.

Currently we offer the option to share your question or answer with your wider Yahoo! contacts through Yahoo! Updates on the ‘Preview your question/answer’ pages.  In relation to this feature we have some good news and some bad news…

The Good News

Over the next week we’re going to be improving the visual presentation of the Updates feature and giving you easier control over what you share and where.

This is how it will look once the Yamster has finished his polishing:

With this lighter design, the change will make it easier to see whether you are currently sharing and let you update this quickly and more simply on a question-by-question or answer-by-answer basis.  You can also quickly choose whether to share with everyone or your contacts only by using the arrow to the right of the tickbox.

Don’t worry about questions showing up against your wishes – if you’ve switched sharing off in the past, it will continue to be switched off.  Otherwise you can choose your setting when you ask  or answer for the first time after we’ve launched this version of Y! updates.

The Bad News

The bad news is that to do this work we need to switch off Updates for the next few days.  This means your questions or answers won’t be shared as Updates to your Yahoo! contacts, and you will not see the Yahoo! Updates box on the Preview your Question page.

We know it’s just a small change but it is one we anticipate will simplify when and how you share your Answers knowledge… and watch this space for more developments around sharing your knowledge!

–Yahoo! Answers Team