Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

 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://uk.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!

Back in March, we launched the “Suggested Questions” module on the homepage. Suggested Questions are intended to provide our most active users with a list of questions we think match their area of expertise.

Since launch we have been taking on board your feedback about this feature and have now made some improvements to this that include:

• Resolved questions will be removed more effectively to leave you with only a selection of open Suggested Questions to answer
• Questions will be matched to you much more quickly so you can always see the freshest and most relevant Suggested Questions
• Improved the relevancy to ensure we deliver your questions only to the most appropriate answerers

Still not seeing Suggested questions?  Remember you need you to be active on a topic for a certain time before we can build up enough information on your areas of expertise before we can start offering you suggested questions.

We hope these changes will improve you experience with Suggested Questions. Remember that you can modify your profile settings if you want to see a different number of Suggested Questions. And that only you will see the questions related to your activity, not the wider community.

Please continue to share your constructive feedback with us and we will keep working on making this feature more relevant and faster in delivering you the questions you want to see.

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

We all love being able to ask questions and get answers about any topic and share knowledge and experiences with a simple click. Whether you’re answering questions or just browsing, there a many ways to contribute to improving the content on Answers.

How can I rate great questions?

Like some of the questions out there? Why not star them? Giving a star to good questions helps Answers promote the best content on the site. When a question gets a star, it gets nominated to appear in the “Popular” list on the Answers home page. The list showcases what users find the most interesting. To ‘un-star’ a question, simply click the star icon.

 How can I rate bad questions or answers?

Sometimes, you see answers you either really like or feel they are not helpful at all. Once you reach Level 2, you have the power to rate answers by clicking thumbs up or thumbs down in the action bar below .

When you thumbs-down an answer we will hide it. Click Show to display it again. Use the Report Abuse link to report abusive questions and answers.  Remember: give an answer thumbs down if you feel it is not helpful for the asker. Report an answer if it violates the Community Guidelines.

How can I comment on an answer?

When a Best Answer is chosen, you have the option of adding comments and rating the best answer after the question is resolved. Every time someone gives a thumbs up to your best answer, you automatically get an extra point. The maximum bonus points a Best Answer can accumulate is 50.

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

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team