Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

 Perceptive Answerers may have noticed a few changes to our Category List. First of all, the Environment & Ecology category no longer exists under Science & Mathematics. That’s because environmental issues are so popular amongst the community that we’ve given the topic its own space, complete with new subcategories. The Environment category in now located top level in the Category List and can be found on the Answers Home Page.The new subcategories in Environment are Alternative Fuel Vehicles, Conservation, Global Warming, Green Living, and General – Environment. Current questions about any of these topics will be moved into their new locations.

In addition, we’ve added a few of the most requested categories from the community. You’ll now find a Horses category under Pets, a Dream Interpretation category under Social Science, and we’ve added People with Disabilities and Seniors categories under Cultures & Groups.

We’ve also added a few categories based on some of the more popular topics on Answers. Just in time for warmer weather, you’ll now find Camping and Climbing categories under Outdoor Recreation. We’ve also added some categories dedicated to popular websites under Internet, including Facebook, Flickr, Google, MSN, MySpace, Wikipedia, and YouTube.

Lastly, we couldn’t ignore the growing popularity of consumer gaming consoles. That’s why we’ve updated Games & Gear with Nintendo Wii, PlayStation, and Xbox subcategories.

These are just a few of the changes we’ve made to the Category List so keep your eyes peeled for new categories and remember to place you questions in the appropriate areas.

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland team

 This weekend sees a clash of musical titans with the arrival of the Eurovision Song Contest finale. Ten countries will go head to head to in a bid to be crowned the musical champions of Europe.

Throughout Europe the event has become a annual institution that takes in the weird and the wonderful; the serious and the shameful. Since 1956 when the competition first launched, the tradition of Eurovision has seen artists aiming to prove that they have what it takes to achieve world wide success.

Given the boost of winning, the artists will be attempting to emulate the accomplishment of the world’s biggest selling acts. For instance the achievement of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, which Eric found, through Yahoo! Answers, to be the worlds top selling single when he asked the question “does anybody know the song that has sold the most copies in musical history?”

Recent entrants from Britain have been presented as some what of a joke with the artists being famously overlooked by the judges. Two years ago the UK was saved from the humiliation of receiving zero points by gaining automatic qualification. However this year the UK’s shining light comes in the form of Scooch with their catchy, if a little Steps-esque, number ‘Flying the Flag for You’. According to the experts the song provides the UK’s best chance in years. Can the group take on the success of past winners such as Sandi Shaw, Brotherhood of Man, Lulu, Bucks Fizz and Katrina and the Waves?

Zzzgrammargirlzzz asked the question on Answers, “which country has won the most Eurovision song contests?”, and while the UK may have five titles under their belts the leaders (and Wogan favourites) are Ireland with seven victories in the contest. With Terry present on the night – a tradition integral to the competition in itself – will his support be enough to spur Irish entrants Devish onto their eight win?

All of the acts, weather they are brilliant or appalling, believe that their nation’s song has all of the elements to make up a great piece of popular music. But what is it that makes up a classic piece of song writing? Ceasareor posed the question to the community “what do you think is more important in a song lyrics or melody?”. ElfRuler was on hand to provide some helpful advice and pointed out that “the lyrics and melody of a song are married together” to create the perfect composition. Let’s just hope that the entrants on Saturday have been given the same advice.

While the Eurovision competition may be an object of ridicule in some quarters, it is all performed in the name of fun – political bias from the judges aside. It also provides a chance to witness live the music that is coming out of each of the countries that takes part. Moesha m wanted to know what the future trends in music held in store, and this is the perfect way to find out across Europe.

So whatever your opinion may be on the event, the Eurovision song contest this Saturday will certainly be entertaining, even if none of the acts take your fancy the intercontinental banter between the judges is always sure to throw up a few laughs. Who knows, watch it and you just might catch the next big thing. Stranger things have happened: the Cheeky Girls anyone?

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

Now let’s look at some possible answers:

Answer 1:

“I hate the Ford Focus! Anyone that puts more money into one that has already had problems is an idiot! Don’t be stupid. Ford sucks.”

Answer 1 is a violation, but some might still ask, “Why is this in violation?”

The Answerer who posted this wasn’t really looking to answer the question. Instead, they used their answer as an opportunity to take out their frustrations on the Asker. The Asker isn’t looking to be attacked for their decision to own a Ford vehicle. They’re asking how to change a timing belt, and if you read the details they are explicitly looking for advice on ways to get started.

Answer 2:

“Nice question! I want to know the answer to this also. Let me know when you get an answer”

Answer 2 is also a violation. In this case, the Answerer does not actually answer the question. It’s true that they aren’t being mean, harassing anyone, or venting to the community, but we have to keep in mind that Answers is a community based on questions and answers. Q&A is our focus, so if you’re posting responses that aren’t actually answers to questions, you’re not helping the Asker find what they are looking for. If you want to keep an eye on a question, you can always add it to your Watchlist so you can revisit it later and read the answers.

As we all know, questions can violate the Community Guidelines also. Let’s take a look at a question that would qualify as a violation:

As you can see, this question is in violation of the Community Guidelines because the person that posted this isn’t actually asking a question at all. Instead, they are using Answers solely for the purposes of ranting.

We hope this helps clarify some of our Community Guidelines. We’ll continue our exploration of Community Guidelines Dos and Don’ts in future posts like this. Let us know what you think.

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

 Whenever anyone asks us about Yahoo! Answers, we immediately focus on the aspects of asking and answering questions, but it’s also important to emphasize the millions of Q&As that you can readily search at any given moment.

For example, search is a great way to see whether your question may already have been asked and answered in the past. Running a quick search before asking a common question like “why is the sky blue?” can help keep repetitious Q&A to a minimum.

We also find that using search to find open questions to answer makes my time spent on Answers feel more worthwhile. We use our Advanced Search and choose Open Questions under the “question status” section to find Q&A with topics to my liking — playing guitar or marathon training. Advanced Search can also be used to search a specific category or a particular timeframe for Q&A. For example, we could restrict a search to find only open questions in the Cars and Transportation section if we wanted to answer open questions specifically about car maintenance.

While many longtime Answerers are probably already familiar with many of these uses of search in Answers, there are still some secrets you may not be familiar with. For example, many of you have expressed the desire to sort by “Date” and by “Number of Answers.” While we have plans to make this easier in the future, the ability to apply these sorting options to search results currently exists. As a special treat to our blog readers, here are a couple secret tricks that let you do this:

• To sort by date, do a search and then click in the address bar of your browser. Add this to the text to the end of the URL “&s=-date” and hit Enter. Here is an example of a search on “Spider-Man” sorted by the most recently asked questions:

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=spider%20man&s=-date

• To sort by number of answers, do a search and then click in the address bar of your browser. Add this text to the end of the URL “&s=-answer_count” and then hit Enter. Here is an example of a search on “global warming” with questions that have the most answers first:

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=global+warming&s=-answer_c…

All tricks and tips aside, we’ve recently made some improvements to our search algorithm on the backend to help return more accurate results for each query. So please check it out and let us know what you think. The team that worked on these improvements feels that these are only the first steps in improving search – there will be more to come. Please let us know any other suggestions you have to help improve your search experience.

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team