Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

You may have noticed we feature specific questions on the homepage every day, indeed you may wish your questions to be one of these. So, how we do we choose these and what type of questions do we pick?

We tend to love the original, the quirky, the I’ve-always-wondered-that-myself aspect of your questions, and in general pick them along those lines. But more specifically, we look for questions that:

•  Are well-written and concise

• When answered, will become useful or interesting knowledge 

• Shed light on things we usually take for granted, or don’t think about

• And of course, the hard-to-define “cool” factor. Basically, whatever we think is cool

If your question is featured, we do ask that you try to keep it open as long as possible to allow more people chance to answer. Our featured questions tend to attract more answers so they can be a really good source of information for the more open-to-discussion type of questions.

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers Team

We’ve recently heard a lot of people saying that they cannot find a category for their question. In light of this, we thought we’d talk about some of the categories that we’ve found pretty interesting and often host terrific questions.

Did you know that we have a category just for Books & Authors for all the literati out there? You can find it under the Arts & Humanities section, and it is a great place to find out reviews on new authors or possible interpretations of a plot. You’ll even find debates about the highly anticipated final book in the Harry Potter series.

We also have a section for both the “fashionistas” and those who want makeover advice. The Fashion & Accessories section can be found under Health & Beauty by selecting Beauty & Style. Here there are questions about the latest fashion trends and accessorizing help. You can also get advice on dressing for a particular occasion, such as a summer wedding.

On the serious side, we offer a Law & Ethics section under the Politics & Government category. You could find out the meaning of “good faith” in UK law or ask for clarification of other specific laws. There are also many questions on the process of setting up wills and settling the estates of a loved one.

So dig around and familiarize yourself, because with over 730 categories at Yahoo! Answers, chances are you’ll find a fitting home for your question.

Finding questions and answers is now more convenient than ever, because you can search Yahoo! Answers directly from your Firefox Search Bar. Simply go to https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/search-engines , and click “Yahoo! Answers” to add the icon to your Search Bar (see screen shot).

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

It’s that time again… here are the product updates we made today:Fairer voting rule
Many of you have suggested that to make it fair for everyone, you should not be able to vote for your own answers. We’ve made this update, and hopefully it will help put everyone on a level playing field.

Search-ahead improvements
By now most of you know that when you start typing in a question , you’re shown similar questions that were asked before. If you see that someone else has asked the same question, you can save the trouble and points of asking it yourself. In this update, we’ve improved the search algorithm to make the results more relevant (see screenshot).

New rules to improve content quality
As you know, we’re always working to improve the content quality of Answers, and dissuade abuses that take away the impact of the good Q&As YOU work hard to write. So in this update, we created two new rules to help keep clean and useful information in, and trollers out.

Two-point deduction for user deletions
Now, when you delete your own answer, two points will be taken away. This is to make it less attractive for people who write junk answers, delete them, and avoid a violation while maintaining their point gain.

Two-point deduction for all violations
I think most of you agree that it shouldn’t pay to abuse Yahoo! Answers. Now, if your question or answer is deleted for a violation of community guidelines, you will lose two points.

As always, we’d like to know what you think of these changes.

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

Welcome to the Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog.  Some of you may be familiar with the Yahoo! US Answers blog, well now we in the UK & Ireland have our own!  This means we can focus on the UK & Ireland community and content that is specifically relevant to you.

Through this blog we hope to share with you the latest Answers news and product updates. We will be highlighting interesting questions and answers, our exceptional users and keeping you aware of special promotions relevant to the UK & Ireland. 

We depend on YOU to help us to keep making Answers what it is and to make the community flourish, so if you have any feedback on Answers please let us know on the Answers forum.

In the meantime, keep on asking interesting questions, giving thoughtful answers, and if you see something that doesn’t belong in Yahoo! Answers, report it – the community will appreciate it!

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team