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

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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!

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