Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

Have you ever wondered if you are “left brain” or “right brain?” Are you creative or logical? Well the Yahoo! Answers Brain Bus can help you find out – and it’s coming to a UK event near you.

The Answers Brain Bus is your chance to unleash your inner experience, play your part in the Answers community and even meet the Answers team. All you have to do is find the bus and come and say hello.

The Answers Brain Bus will be on tour throughout the UK this summer, meeting passionate experts wherever they are. It started last weekend – Saturday July 29th and Sunday 30th – where it was to be found on Clapham Common North Side near the Trinity Hospice. We even asked the Answers community a question to celebrate: what is the best beer garden in Clapham?

After Clapham you can see the Brain Bus next weekend at Ripcurl Boardmasters in Newquay on the 5th and 6th of August. On the 11th and 12th catch it at Shrewsbury Flowershow. On the 19th and 20th it reaches the massive motorsport event, Monster Mania in Kent.

The bus continues on to Dartmouth Royal Regatta on the 23rd, Metro Get Loaded in London on the 27th concluding the month in Mathew Street Festival in Liverpool 28th and 29th. Catch it in Dundee, Beaulieu, London and Manchester in September.  Come join the Bus – your brain will love you for it!

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

It’s perhaps stating the obvious but the UK & Ireland continue to swelter under a heat wave. After a rainy start to the summer, just in time to ruin the odd day of Wimbledon, the sunshine had kicked in with a vengeance, breaking recent meteorological records.

Naturally, British people are not well equipped for extreme weather. Everyone is used to changeable weather: it’s always a source of a good natter.  But extreme weather is something else, leaving the Answers community asking how to beat the heat. If you throw in the factor of public transport, you can be sure arguments will ensue and you really have to be careful what you say in the heat of an argument.

City dwellers, already struggling through heat and public transportation, might feel that the world is against them when they learn about the phenomenon of urban heat islands. You could have probably guessed it from anecdotal evidence but it turns out cities are actually hotter places than their surroundings, even though they get less sunlight. Perhaps the heat index is a better way of quantifying their suffering, as it takes into account humidity as well as temperature.

Of course the heat wave begs a far larger question: are we witnessing the effects of climate change? Perhaps we are.

— Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

We made some updates to the product this week, and many of the suggestions came straight from you. Let us know what you think.

Get your feedback on your answers quicker

To get a quicker turnaround on the answers you provide, we made the following changes to encourage askers to act quicker on the answers he or she receives:

• Resolve questions after four hours – Instead of having to wait 24 hours to pick a best answer, you can now do it in four hours–many of you pointed out that it was easy to forget to resolve your question if you had to wait an entire day.
• Questions open for four days – Questions will be open for four days instead of seven.
• Question extension lasts four days – When you extend the open period for a question, you now get four extra days instead of seven.
• Voting period lasts two days – The voting period will last two days instead of seven.

10-point deduction for abuse

We would like to discourage questions, answers and comments that do not follow the community guidelines. We know not everyone is influenced by points, but for those that care about them, we now deduct ten points instead of just two points for every post that is deleted as a violation of the community guidelines.

Bug fixes

The following are a few of the bugs we fixed:

• Best answer bug – Some of you reported that the number of best answers listed on your profile page was incorrect, and some of your best answers were not marked as such.
• Sorting bug – Some of you reported that when you tried to sort by descending order on the category pages, the results were incorrect.
• Tiebreaker bug – Some of you reported that a few questions in tiebreaker status had an answer with more votes than the others.
  
• Rating bug – Some of you reported being unable to rate best answers even though you haven’t reached your daily limit.

— Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

If you’ve had a glance at it recently, you’ll have noticed that Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers has a thriving Cars & Transportation category. From maintenance to motorcycles, commuting to car makes, there’s a wealth of automotive knowledge flowing through the community.

 Here at Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers that rich seam of knowledge and ability has not gone unnoticed, and we feel it shouldn’t go unrewarded. That’s why we’ve arranged for five skilled Cars & Transportation askers to win a pair of tickets to the opening day of the 2006 British International Motor Show.

The event opens on the 20^th July at London’s ExCeL centre and runs for ten days. It is returning to the capital for the first time in 30 years and you can expect 13 global premières and 20 European and UK launches from the big hitters in the world of cars. The event is open on the 20th until 9pm.

Entering the competition as a Yahoo! Answers user couldn’t be easier – but you’ve got to be quick. The deadline is Tuesday 18th July at 12pm (GMT).
Simply post a link in the comments section below this blog post to your strongest question in the Cars & Transportation category. The five best askers, as judged by the Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team, will win a pair of tickets each for Thursday July 20^th. Transportation to the event is not included. The tickets will be sent for a Wednesday (19^th July) arrival.

All you have to do is get asking and then nominate your best question to win!

 – Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

UPDATE: This competition is now closed.

If you’re a regular Answers visitor, you’ll know we thrive on people’s knowledge. Some people however, take it to the next level with their depth and breadth in a specialist field. Two such people are music experts Bill and Frank, more formally known as Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton. They have spent years in clubs, pubs, arches, churches and airports – travelling, living, seeing and writing about DJ culture. They recently condensed it into a book celebrating 100 years of the DJ.

Given their obvious expertise, we are delighted that they have been posting on Answers. Their questions probe deeply into dance music culture, unlocking the rich seams of knowledge held within the Answers community. Many of the questions like, for example who was the first person to mix records live?, leave you wondering why you never thought to ask them before. Similarly although we all know what the word ‘discotheque’ means, what are its exact origins?. The same applies to the word ska. While a question like what is the most valuable record of all time? might even make you rush back to your vinyl collection to double check for lost gems.

Bill and Frank also have a remarkably high best answer ratio, currently running at 71%. They’ve tackled some tricky questions, and fellow askers seem pleased to have their questioned answered by such eminent music experts. Lets hope they stick around for a while!

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team