Yahoo!7 Answers Australia

We’re always working on improvements and new features to ensure you, the community, get the most out of Yahoo!7 Answers. Today is no different.

We have recently introduced a new “Suggested Questions” module on the Yahoo!7 Answers homepage. Some of you have told us that it can be time consuming to find questions that match your interests. You also told us that one of the things you love about Yahoo!7 Answers is when an expert in the field finds your question and gives you an amazing answer. So, we looked for a smart way to present questions to the most relevant answerers.

With this new feature, Yahoo!7 Answers users will be able to see questions that are better suited to their interests and areas of expertise, rather than just those most recently posted. And, while it will only appear for some of our most active members, we think it can positively impact our whole community by helping improve both the quality and speed of answers on the site.

The suggestions are based on your most recent activity on Yahoo!7 Answers. For example: if you recently answered many questions related to a specific make or model of mobile phone, it is most likely that you will get more suggested questions related to this subject matter. It’s that easy.

You’ll find Suggested Questions displayed on the homepage of Yahoo!7 Answers as well as on the confirmation page after you have asked or answered a question.

If you aren’t seeing the module, don’t fret. For now, only Yahoo!7 Answers users with a significant amount of activity around a topic will receive suggested questions, but the more active you are on Yahoo!7 Answers, the easier it will be for us to know what you are passionate and knowledgeable about.  Once we know this, it will enable us to present you with questions that best match your interests, too.

As always, we want to give you as much control as possible, so you can modify your profile settings if you want to receive a different number of Suggested Questions. Alternatively, if you prefer to only see the most recent questions, you can opt-out of Suggested Questions completely (if you change your mind, you can re-activate this feature). Simply, edit your profile and untick the “Suggest me questions based upon my activity” option.

Remember that we need you to be active on a topic for a certain time to start offering you suggested questions.

And, of course, these questions are private: only you will see the questions related to your activity. So, what are you waiting for? Check out your Yahoo!7 Answers homepage and enjoy the new shortcut to share your knowledge.

Please visit our help pages for more information on suggested questions. http://help.yahoo.com/l/au/yahoo7/answers/content/

Following last week’s announcement, the transition to the new Yahoo!7 Profiles is now taking place on Answers. You will start noticing changes in your options.

What does this mean? From now on,  instead of importing your image display from Yahoo!7 360, Answers will use the image from your Yahoo!7 Profile. For those who like to have different images, keep in mind that in the future only one image will be displayed in all of Yahoo!7 Services. 360 users should update their image and make sure they keep the one they want.

To ensure that the image you want to show on Answers is the right one, we recommend you go to http://profiles.yahoo.com now and activate your new profile. Once you’re there, you’ll be asked to verify some information that you’ve previously shared with Yahoo!7, and to select the image you’d like to share with the Answers community.

If you have never used other Yahoo!7 services and haven’t activated your profile yet, your image will show up as the “Grey Face.”

For those of you who display an Avatar on Answers – don’t worry. This won’t change.

Both Avatars and nicknames will continue to remain the same on Answers.

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

Yahoo!7 Answers is over 2 years old now.  During this time, millions of questions have been published in many languages across subjects as wide and varied as life can offer.

Without having specific categories for all of your questions finding your way through the site would be a minefield.  This is why we try to keep the site organised – it helps the community find questions on the topics they are interested in.

A few weeks ago we introduced another feature that will help you have a “more organised” experience on Answers: the little flag under the question. As we have said, Answers exists many countries and different languages. And we offer you the possibility of sorting the content you see by country or by language.

Now, when you scroll down to the bottom of the answers and the question has been originally posted in a different country you will see the flag. This will help you understand which country the asker comes from and for you to give a better Answer based on their location (and not be surprised by the fact of someone asking how much water is one gallon )

If there is no flag under the question, don’t worry: it doesn’t mean that the question comes from outer space! It means the question was published in the same country as you are logged in to. Be careful though, if you do see a little Aussie flag like this:

that means you’re not on Australian Answers. To check, make sure the top left title has a 7 (like the Channel 7 symbol) in the title as we’re called Yahoo!7 Answers in Australia.

And that leads us to the categories: that’s the system we use to keep our content in the right drawer. If you are an expert cook, then you only have to go to the Food & Drink category to find heaps of questions to share your knowledge. Likewise if you have no idea about car maintenance, you can be sure to find some automobile experts in the Cars & Transportation category.

This is why we are so insistent on you posting in the right category: it’s beneficial to you and your fellow community members. And… we’d like to remind you that posting repeatedly on unrelated categories goes against our community guidelines. Read more about it here

And that’s how Yahoo!7 Answers is organised. Now, we’ve got a question for you: what is your favourite category? Leave us a comment!

Caitlin
Community Manager

It’s already been a year and a half since we launched Community Moderation on Answers. Every day, trusted users work together to report and remove any content that violates the Community Guidelines and Yahoo!7 Terms of Service. Since this is one of the topics that regularly appears in the forum, here’s a refresher for those who would like to take part.

How does Community Moderation work?

Before:

Any user could report abusive content on Answers. A Yahoo! employee then reviewed the report and decided whether to keep or to delete the content. This system is still in place.

Now:

Thanks to Community Moderation, our efforts to control abusive content on Answers have greatly increased. Once a report is submitted to Yahoo!, Community Moderation measures the reputation of both the reporter and the person being reported. The system then determines whether it can remove the reported item directly from the site based on community input or whether further review is needed.

How does the reputation system work?

You must be very familiar with the Community Guidelines in order to become one of our trusted Answers users. As you develop a better idea about what’s acceptable on Answers and begin to report content, you will build a good reputation and gain influence. The more accurate your reporting, the higher your reputation will become.

However, if you abuse Community Moderation, your reputation will suffer. With a low reputation, your power to report and remove potential abuse will be reduced, which could result in a suspension.

The community is very important to the Answers team. Without it, the site is nothing, so we have set up protection mechanisms to filter out specific targeting of one user by another. Similarly, the system promotes accurate reporters, giving them more influence.

How does the appeal system work?

Although very effective, Community Moderation is not perfect. Incorrect reports will occasionally happen and some users will find their content erroneously deleted. If your question or answer is reported, we’ll send you an email stating that it has been removed. If you feel that the system was mistaken, first read the Community Guidelines to double-check. If you still think there’s a strong case, click the “Appeal” link in the email to submit an appeal. This will be reviewed by a Yahoo! employee. If we agree, your question or answer will reappear on Answers, and whoever reported you will have less influence when they report abuse in the future.

We highly encourage you to appeal if you’ve read the Community Guidelines and are sure your content has been removed in error. If your appeal is successful, not only will your content be reinstated, but also your reputation will be boosted and those that reported you will lose influence. Of course, we would advise you not to appeal for the sake of appealing, either. If your content truly deserved to be deleted, it is very unlikely we will put it back on the site just because you’ve appealed.

How do I report spam content?

Easy! Report an abuse and indicate that it’s spam. You might remember that we used to ask you to report spam on the forum. The Community Moderation system is faster and will help you improve your reputation if you report correctly, so reporting spam using the “Report abuse” button is beneficial for everyone.

That’s our update on how Community Moderation works. We hope you found this helpful!

Hey everyone,

You may have noticed that the link to the blog is no longer at the top right of the Answers homepage. It’s now located on the lower left in the Related Links section.

Of course, you can always just click on a blog post from the rotating module or keep up-to-date by adding the Answers module to your My Yahoo!7 page.

Another way to keep in touch is on Twitter, where you can follow us at: http://twitter.com/YahooAnswersAU.

However you find your way here, we appreciate your visit. Thanks for reading!

Welcome Caitlin…

I am very pleased to introduce the new Answers Community Manager, Caitlin. After returning from a stint working in the UK, Caitlin has joined the Australian Answers team to work on bringing you, the Answers community more of the things that you want and address your needs. She will also update you with the latest news of what we are up to and is on the lookout for new featured users. In her own words…

“Hi! I’m a Sydneysider born and bred, however as Alana mentioned, I spent the last 2 years working for Skype and Teachers TV in the UK. I also indulged in typical London pastimes of going to gigs, warming up in the pub and whingeing about the weather. I took full advantage of Easyjet’s cheap flights and did some cool things like playing golf in southern Estonia and going to the world’s first Pilsner brewery in Czech Republic. I love playing soccer, reading trashy novels and am really glad to be back with friends and family in sunnier climes. I’m very much looking forward to working on Yahoo!7 Answers with the community.”

No doubt you are all looking forward to reading her blog posts like I am and I encourage you to visit the blog regularly to see what Caitlin has to say.

Alana
Product Manager

As we continue to change and improve Answers we wanted to improve the ways we communicate and expand the ways we engage with you, the Answers community. We hope our shiny, new blog will help us do just that!

So what’s changed?

On the upper right of the page, you’ll see a link to Yahoo!7 Answers as well as tools for finding information. The Search box gives you three places to look in: Blog, Web, or Answers. If you still don’t find what you need, you can post a question directly to Answers from the box below Search.

You’ll also find subscription links for My Yahoo!7 and RSS feeds, blogs we like, and recent readers from the MyBlogLog community. Be sure to join the MyBlogLog community and see your profile appear in this section.

Beneath each post you can comment on it (please do!), add the post to del.icio.us, or go directly to Yahoo!7 Answers.

What hasn’t changed?

The Yahoo!7 Answers blog is still the place to come for product updates, announcements, community guidelines features, and staff picks as well as timely, anecdotal, and (we hope) informative posts highlighting the topics we find in our meanderings through the Answers community.

Thanks for checking out our new blog…see you soon!

Alana
Product Manager