Yahoo!7 Answers Blog Australia

Today, we are introducing a brand-new quiz that will test your community guidelines knowledge! Do you know the difference between chatting and point gaming? Have you committed a violation without understanding what you did wrong? Test your understanding: it’s fun, and if you pass, you will earn 20 points!

Why are Community Guidelines important?
Our site continues to grow at an incredible speed and we have thousands of new people signing up every week. To keep our Answers community a fun and informative place it is important to understand our community guidelines.

What improves our site’s content is understanding how to ask questions and how to write a great answer. Like any other community, members must follow a set of principles in order to keep our site a safe, fun and positive. As members of our community, we want you to understand the following:

Test your knowledge!
We encourage new members of the community to read the Community Guidelines so that our community can continue to be a helpful place for you. By following the above points, our site will continue to be a place where members can find answers to questions that you were always curious about.

Take the community guidelines quiz to test your knowledge, earn points and let us know what you think!

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!

The next time you log into Yahoo!7 Answers you may notice things look a little bit different. We’re rolling out a new homepage and navigation over the next few days. Don’t worry: if you don’t see the new changes just yet, you will soon.

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

1- New Navigation

You may have noticed that atop the Answers banner, there are four new, navigation tabs: Home, Browse Categories, My Activity, and About. Each of these tabs (as well as the green Answers banner) will stay with you throughout your experience on the site, making it easier for you to get to the places on Answers you care about most.

Home: This brings you back to the main page of Answers, where you can see the Best of Answers rotating module, the link to the Answers Blog (which is now on the right hand side, as well as the most recent questions posted on the site.

Browse categories: more about this below

My activity: From here, you can go directly to your Answers profile, view your network, your network activity, and even edit your preferences.

About: Learn all about Answers, revisit the Community Guidelines, check out the leaderboard, Suggestion Board,  and visit the Answers Blog.

2 – Browsing categories

On the old Answers homepage all of the categories were permanently displayed on the left hand column, hogging up homepage space that could have been used for valuable questions. We’ve decided to tuck the categories away under the top hide-away menu where you can easily access them any time, or, if you want to view them all at once, just click on the browse category tab to be taken to the “All Categories” page. From here, you’ll be able to peruse all of the questions that are: open, resolved or in voting on the site.

3- An updated look and feel

Over the past few years we’ve heard from quite a few of you that you love the Answers green but it’s just a little too green. So we’ve taken your feedback to heart and have toned down the green just a bit and have replaced the white background with a light blue that is a little easier on the eyes. Our smilies have also received a facelift and look a bit more polished throughout the site.

Additionally, you’ll notice that the page feels a bit wider—one thing we heard from you when we introduced the new category pages several months back was that you liked the extra space. This extra space allows us to display even more questions on the homepage, making it easier for you to jump right in.

But wait, there’s more!

This release doesn’t just include cosmetic changes—we also included quite a few backend bug fixes, as well as a few feature requests, like updating the category leaderboards much more regularly. Starting today, category leaderboards will update on a daily basis instead of weekly.

Please note they will NOT be real-time, but will update at the beginning of each day (AEST).  This means at 9am AEST on Friday, your points total will show as it was at 7:59pm PST on Thursday.

Tell us what you think

Once you’ve given the new homepage a test drive, tell us what you think! We’ve started two threads on the Suggestion Board for the new homepage—one for questions and one for comments – and we’ll be checking them regularly.  Additionally, you’re always welcome to use the “Tell us what you think” link found at the bottom of every Yahoo!7 Answers page.  You’re also welcome to leave your comments here, on the blog.

Thanks, and we hope you like it!

Great news! You may have noticed that our Yahoo!7 Answers blog has received a little make-over. With the new functionalities you can now:

Rate posts
Now, apart from having the option to leave a comment, you can give each post a rating. Rate posts you like the best with five stars. To do so, just hover the mouse over the stars at the end of each post and choose how many stars you want to rate the post with. Also, you are now able to view the highest rated posts in real time by viewing the ‘Highest Rated’ box on the sidebar.

Share or save posts on the most popular social network/bookmarking sites
With a single click, you will be able to post updates on your favorite social networking sites. Here’s how: for Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and Yahoo Buzz, click on the relevant logo below the post. For other popular sites such as Bebo, MySpace or StumbleUpon, click on the blue ‘Share’ button below the post and select whatever network you want to share to, then post the blog. You can even email the post to a friend or save it in your bookmarks. Easy peasy!

If you are a Twitter user and want to keep up to date with the Answers blog, simply click on the ‘Follow us on Twitter‘ link on the sidebar and add us to your contacts.

Find posts through the Tag Cloud
We’ve also added a tag cloud so if you’re interested in posts about product updates, celebrities or the environment for example, you can click on the relevant tag and find all the blogs we’ve written about that particularly topic.

We think these new add-ons will make the Yahoo!7 Answers blog easier to use and more fun. What do you think?

The Yahoo!7 Answers Team are excited to announce a small but significant change to the site. As of today, any links posted by Level 1 Answers users will not be hyperlinked.

It may seem like a trivial change but it is an important step to limit the impact of spam on Answers. The site has had a points and levels system since its inception, which aims to promote activity and trust. Only hyperlinking http URLs from users who are Level 2 and above is a new way to reward an protect our core contributors.

The lack of hyperlinking applies to any link that begins http:// – links that are posted that begin www. are already not hyperlinked for all users regardless of level. We appreciate that removing hyperlinking for level 1 users is not a final or a perfect solution. For example long URLs are currently being truncated but we are working on further updates to improve this.

We’ve taken this action in response to clear user feedback, from you the Answers community. And rest assured that this is just one of a number of initiatives we are implementing to limit the impact of spam on Answers. We hope it’s a small step towards making Answers a better place. We’d welcome your feedback on this change.

Yahoo!7 Answers Team

Believe it or not, it’s already been a year since we introduced the new Yahoo!7 Answers blog to the community. As we strive to enhance your experience on Answers, we wanted to improve the ways we communicate and expand the ways we engage with you.

Remember that you can access the blog from the Related Links on the lower left-hand side of the Answers homepage, or you can bookmark it on your browser.

And don’t forget, you can follow us on our Yahoo!7 Answers Twitter account, and if you prefer using RSS to keep up to date, you only need to click subscribe and add us to your RSS reader.

We hope you’ve found the Blog to be helpful and entertaining. We’ve received a lot of comments over the last year which we always welcome. It’s a great way to learn more about what you like, what you don’t, what you think about Answers and what you think about many topics we cover. Keep them coming – we love hearing what you have to say!

We have a couple of questions for you to give us a better idea of what you want on the blog:

1) Do you remember your favourite blogpost? What was it?

2) If you could see anything on the Answers Blog -what would it be? More celebrities, more competitions, more about the product, more about other Yahoo!7 products, any new blog features you’d like to see? Use your imagination and let us know!

Caitlin
Community Manager

You’re asking or answering a question and you want to mention a great site as a reference. How do you make sure your link doesn’t violate the Answers Community Guidelines? We’ve been getting a lot of questions about including links in questions and answers. Here is a reminder on what is considered acceptable and what is an infraction of the Community Guidelines.

What is considered spam?
Spam is unsolicited email. The spam answer usually has little or no relevance to the question and contains either a link to a spam page or an email address. If you notice someone answering questions compulsively with a link to an unrelated site (usually a site offering money or selling products), report it! You’ve found a spammer.

What about links to a question I posted?
Some people end their answer with “Please answer my question: http://au.answers.yahoo.com/…” But the question they link to often has nothing to do with what you were asking . This kind of linking also violates the Community Guidelines as it is the same as spam-unsolicited links.

What kind of link is acceptable?
Know a website or book that might help the asker? You can! That’s why we included the ‘Sources’ box on the answer page. Just paste the URL into the ‘Sources’ box. You’ll be making your answer much more complete.

By posting the useful links in the ‘sources’ box and by reporting spam, you’re helping make Answers a better site.

Have more questions? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Back in March, we launched the “Suggested Questions” module on the homepage. Suggested Questions are intended to provide our most active users with a list of questions we think match their area of expertise.

Since launch we have been taking on board your feedback about this feature and have now made some improvements to this that include:

• Resolved questions will be removed more effectively to leave you with only a selection of open Suggested Questions to answer;
• Questions will be matched to you much more quickly so you can always see the freshest and most relevant Suggested Questions;
• Improved the relevancy to ensure we deliver your questions only to the most appropriate answerers.

Still not seeing Suggested questions? Remember you need you to be active on a topic for a certain time before we can build up enough information on your areas of expertise before we can start offering you suggested questions.

We hope these changes will improve you experience with Suggested Questions. Remember that you can modify your profile settings if you want to see a different number of Suggested Questions. And that only you will see the questions related to your activity, not the wider community.

Please continue to share your constructive feedback with us and we will keep working on making this feature more relevant and faster in delivering you the questions you want to see.

There has been a lot of interest and activity around our move to Yahoo!7 profiles.  A benefit of using one profile for your Yahoo!7 experience means you can now share your Answers activity with those you are connected to via your Yahoo!7 profile, even if they aren’t Answers users.

Sharing your updates will help you get better responses to your questions and will let show off your knowledge to your entire social network!

We have added two new ‘Updates’ features to Answers:

• one notifies your contacts each time you ask a question
• one notifies your contacts of each question you answer

Now, when you are at the “Preview your question” stage of asking a question you will be prompted to ‘Manage your updates’. Here you choose if you want to share your updates to your social connections.

By default updates will be set to ‘Don’t share my updates’ to keep your content private unless you choose otherwise.

To give you control over what and when you share, this option can be changed anytime you ask or answer a question.  You have full control over this setting from the ‘Edit my profile’ page too.

By not sharing your updates whatever you do on Answers will not appear on your Yahoo!7 profile.

When you ask or answer we offer a link to your profile to show you exactly who you are currently sharing your updates with.  Click the ‘Manage who sees your updates’ link to be taken to profiles which is the place where you can control who see all of your Yahoo!7 Updates.

Had enough of seeing this message?  Check the box and we promise it won’t bug you again.We’ve tried to make controlling your updates as simple as possible but, if you want more information about managing your Answers updates you can find it through these Help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/au/yahoo7/answers/updates/

If you are still unsure about how your profile works or how to change features on your Yahoo! profile, check out our sister-blog – www.yprofileblog.com – and this specific article that is addressed to Answers users.

We hope you like this new feature, we do!

Happy updating!
Yahoo!7 Answers Team

The migration to the new Yahoo!7 profile platform is almost complete for Answers and we understand some of you are concerned about certain changes. Rest assured, as we are always working on improvements, your feedback is very important hence we would like to address some of the issues you have raised over the past weeks.

What if I want a different image for Answers?
Remember, you can change your profile image whenever you want. Feel free to post a different profile picture so you don’t feel like you are always displaying the same image. Also, don’t forget you can also use an avatar on Answers. We have many cool avatars that can be personalised to reflect your individuality (check them out here: http://au.avatars.yahoo.com). As mentioned before, for those of you who display an avatar on Answers, both avatar and nickname will continue to remain the same.

What about resizing my image?
You’ve also noticed images have to be cropped in your Yahoo!7 profile. If you’re worried about losing part of the image, why not choose one with a large background? This way, the square cropping required in your Yahoo!7 profile will have a minimal effect.

In other words, the same image I display on Answers will also appear in places like Flickr?
Your universal profile on Yahoo!7 is gradually being rolled out in phases, so there are currently a few properties (including Flickr, MyBlogLog, Messenger, etc.) that do not use profiles at this time. The profiles team is working closely with each of the other Yahoo!7 properties to create a smooth transition to the new profiles service. We know that you value your experiences on Yahoo!7 and want to make sure that the integrity of these sites (and your membership) is maintained, which is why this process has been done gradually instead of all at once.

Please continue to share your constructive feedback with us, as we know the only way for us to improve these services is with your help.