Do’s and Don’ts
Here at Yahoo! Answers, we strive to provide quality content for the community. Every day, trusted users work together to report and remove any content that violates the Community Guidelines. Since abusive content is the most talked-about topic, here is a refresher on what we expect from our users.
Do’s
Courtesy
Asking and Answering clearly
Sharing what you know
Citing Sources
Categorizing correctly
Staring/ Thumbs-up great questions
Reporting abuse
Don’ts
Ranting
Posting questions aimed at giving out your opinions than seeking knowledge are a no-no. So is answering questions for the sole purpose of venting. When you post a question, it must be written in the form of a question. When you answer, it must attempt to answer the question being asked.
Insulting and Being Obscene
Sexually explicit and profanity and images are not welcome on the site. We also do not tolerate any form of insult, discrimination, hate speech. Answers is a diverse community hence everyone should be respected.
Spamming
Answers is not a recruiting site, a dating site or an advertising billboard. Posting irrelevant links for personal or financial gain is prohibited.
Cheating
Creating multiple accounts to reward yourself along with copying and pasting other people’s answers and asking for points is an infraction.
Being harmful and violent
Don’t promote violence or harmful practices. Threatening and harassing other users also violates the guidelines. Anything that is considered illegal in everyday life is also illegal on Answers.
Illegal Content
You can share information about where to download free entertainment and programs as long as it’s a free and legal download site.
We have received many questions about why this or that was deleted, and we think these explanations will help you understand better the Community Guidelines. In extreme cases, members risk losing their Yahoo! ID, and consequently, access to all other Yahoo! services. If everyone follows the rules, content quality will be at its best.
Have more questions? Leave us a comment and let us know!
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Nice Blog UK Team!
Could you please repeat it at all the other country – portals?
It is always good to have a refresher of the Community Guidelines.
Many new users are never quite familiarized with the CG’s due to lack of a mandatory proper tutorial.
Thumbs Up for the reminder Blog!
Thumbs up for a great post.
One little detail: it should be “starring”, not staring
and the Thumbs feature is restricted to Answers, not questions.
Why i am i expected to provide another email for password re-set. I do not have another one i wish to use, and cannot get onto yahoo unless i provide one. I have used my husbands email just to get past it, but i dont particularly want to. Please will you just leave things as they are? They are fine for me, and i would like a bit of choice about whether i upgrade or not.
I don’t think any right-minded user should have an issue with these guidelines, we have all signed up to them. And this explanation is clearer and more plain-speaking than ever before, which I think is useful. What does concern me is that “the system” does not appear to classify me as a “reliable” user. And if I’m not reliable, then who is? How can you make this system bite if you’re not actually giving the “power” to the reliable users? The idea was a good one, but you need to do more work to make it work.
Nice idea, if only these were inforced. I see the sheer amount of homophobes in the LGBT board and it is scary. Those questions don’t get removed! Why not?
A very welcome post Yahoo! Answers Team!
One form of abuse that you failed to mention though is constant thumbs down trolling to which myself and many others are victims, most annoying and something that needs dealt with. All of the information above is very relevant and I suggest that, you make some sort of page available over on Yahoo! Answers with all this information as people would rather read this than some complex page of rules that most don’t understand.
Thank you and best wishes,
~B
Why is Jamie Oliver’s questions still up then? It is an obvious infringment of the “spamming” guideline since it contains links for his new books (links for personal financial gain).
Claire
thanks for the post. something I’m finding frustrating is trying to report abuse. I can’t log on to the questions as the user has blocked me and I can’t find another way to report the abuse. This surely needs dealing with, perhaps a place to report abuse outside of the question
You fail to mention about trolls who report everything they see what are you planning on doing to solve this problem
May I suggest the following as a more pertinent response?
Posting questions aimed at giving out your opinions RATHER THAN EXPLICITLY seeking knowledge are a no-no. So is answering questions for the sole purpose of venting. When you post a question, it must be written in the form of a question. When you answer, it must attempt to answer the question being asked
For David and anyone else who’s interested:
there is a way to see (and if appropriate, report) abusive questions posted by a user who’s blocked you. When you get the message telling you you can’t see the question, copy the URL from the address bar onto a Word document or notepad, logout from Answers, then re-access the Answers homepage but *do not log in*, then paste the URL into the address bar. You will then be able to see the question. If you should then decide that the content is abusive, you can click the report abuse button: at that point, you will be required to login in order to proceed, but by then, you’re in.