Changes to Best Answer time, and to the Preview page
To continuing improving your Yahoo! Answers experience we have introduced a few small changes this week…
Changing time to choose a Best Answer
Based on your feedback to be able to resolve a question quicker, we have now reduced the wait time to choose a best answer from 4 hours to 1 hour. If you now receive multiple responses within an hour you can select one of those as your Best Answer, or choose to put the question to vote at this earlier stage.
The full lifecycle of a question won’t change – questions will still be open for 4 days and up to maximum of 8 days if you extend the expiration. This change gives you the option to resolve earlier or put to vote earlier. If you take no action to resolve or extend the question, the question will automatically go to vote for the Best Answer.
Optional Preview screen when answering questions
Many of you have commented that to you’d prefer an answering experience without having to see your response on the Preview page first. We are now able to offer this…
If you are signed-in with your Answers account and have answered at least one question before then when submitting your answer you can choose to Submit your response immediately without going to the Preview page first. We’ve kept the Preview page too, so you can still see how your response will look before publishing it.
What makes Yahoo! Answers unique is the avid involvement of the community it is YOU that provides the content so continue to ask, answer and vote!
-Yahoo! Answers Team
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That was very nicely presented . The refinements are nice and welcome. I like new features . I appreciate your efforts to improve more .
Many of us are getting an OOPS! page when we submit our answers. The answer still posts, but that OOPS! is annoying and means we have to go through extra hoops to return to our answering area. Glitch? Or do we have something set wrong somewhere? Thanks!
Usually i cannot edti my answers when i post them the first time i always get a oops page and i go back to see my answer unedited
Great changes! Much appreciated
Yeah, I agree with Yahzmin. I have been experiencing some technical difficulties a lot recently.
That aside, I love the new changes! You have the option to choose an answer early, or wait. Now you can also skip that preview step, if you want. It’s great, thanks for the improvements!
hi yamster. all sounds good. however, since same all is over my head, i still love yahoo.answers and will be here all days except Sunday. i love yahoo.answers very much. i’m sure all changes will be exciting. have a good day. truly, susan d.s.
Idk what these people mean by getting the “oops” message, but I’ve been getting it, and half the time only part of my answer was posted. It’s annoying having to copy & paste my answers just in case it does that.
And I never noticed that Y!A told us how many answers we had left. I guess it’s just been a while since I was at those lower levels.
“To continuing improving”???
Someone is placing too much faith in spell check, it seems. If I were posting to millions of users, I would ALWAYS proofread my posts myself. That’s just me, though.
I’m sad to say that I don’t think reducing the waiting time is a good idea – by any chance is there still anyone in the YAT who remembers how things were when we started?
This won’t accomplish anything except for adding more hastily resolved Qs to the database and depriving other users of the chance to provide answers. It’ll become more and more like a race to post an answer before the question can be closed…
Why you’ve chosen to implement these “improvements” over so many good suggestions is something I can’t understand
Hi, I love the site, and being physically disabled, I spend a lot of time here.
The changes sound great, and I personally have not been experiencing any technical glitches or ‘oops’ pages. Keep up the good work.
I didn’t even notice, haha. I’m not sure I agree with changing the wait time to one hour, but it might make impatient people happier. I dunno
Good to see ladies and gentleman. I haven’t been receiving any errors lately so I am assuming it’s been fixed. Nonetheless, keep up the improvement!
It’s all good, but what can we do about people who answer the questions with an insult? It seems like that is an on going problem, I had to report one
person for answering my question with “Your Mother”
Also can we delete those kind answers?
I have an idea, why not change the filter so people can actually post questions?
Also, why not change the TOS so you can say things other would perceive as offensive? Instead of some immature 9 year old going off because you told him the truth, in a kind way? Well, that one isn’t going to change, because it would cause more people to leave the site.
Oh, well. The filter one seems very reasonable. You’ll lose people otherwise.
Nice Job!
I believe that this thing is good. Now we can quickly submit our answers. It will really benefit those with slow internet connections.
How about making it so that people cannot vote down answers that are good and informative for their own that are crap?
I’ve been getting the “oops” a lot too. The best answer time is WAY more convenient than it was before and to “Calimecita”,most of the time after an hour the question/s have gotten most if not all the answers it’s going to get.
1 hour is really fast. Why not 3 hours?
I like the new upgrades but i sugges Yahoo!Answers to solve the ‘ops’ error and to put a ‘Submit’ button at the Edit page at every answers.
Sounds like great changes.Now can you please reinstate me?
I like the new changes. It is nice that you keep the site updated, Good job!!
changing Best Answer that fast will just encourage multiple accounts for cheating
Funnily enough, since Yahoo! Answers made a couple of “improvements” over the past week, I have not been able to login to Yahoo! from my MacBook. I have connected to different wifi networks, and still can’t even open the Yahoo! login page. I could login when I use my mom’s VAIO though, but it’s not like I get to use it anytime i want. What’s going on?
It would be even better if we can choose 2 or 3 answers to be on the top…like the st get 10 the 2nd get 5 and the 3rd get 2 pts …So many times I have asked questions and received brilliant answers but can’t choose other than 1 to be the best….
I like this, more the second change than the first. The preview screen is a bit unnecessary when you’ve used Y!A for several years.
I appreciate not being required to preview. I have already gone over my content before I get to that point.
I do not appreciate dropping the time to one hour. This will not enhance my experience on the site nor will it encourage better answers. I can only say I’m surprised you decided to take that direction.
I do like the changes, just one more I would love to see. When some one deletes a question I wish it could be taken off and not sit on the answer line for 4 days. It just clogs up the system.
it would also be nice if the preview would also be optional when you edit an answer…
Good work on this! As a dial up user, the preview page made answering a 4-5 minute job. Now that there is a submit button, I can post my answer right away and go one to other questions instead of staring at the loading bar for ages. And these updates have been delivered so smoothly! Most of the time, when there is an update, I can’t answer questions for hours. But this time, I have had no glitches since these upgrades! Keep up the good work!
too many OOPS:-( or Not Available
what’s up with that???
What advantage to 1hr? What does is do for you?
I totally, don’t get it. If the objective is a good answer, then let’s wait the entire time the question is posted
Right now, we the bias, ( oh, yah, you’re not, ha. ) get to pick the best ans. hog wash… give the person that asked the question get the ans. that pleases them. Even if they seek a pat on the back, better than the irky answers, that some uneducated, lacking knowledge, to select the best ans. What lack of reason, understanding, and clashing with the facts, it provides. Your why, is totally, lacking a good ans.
Yahoo Answers suck because the people answering questions. no mater what you changes the only thing you can do to help Yahoo Answers is delete the website.
I would like to make a suggestion that is reasonable, and very fair to the person asking the question…After, all why ask a question that is not going to be given any respect but totally be given an irksome, best anwer, cruel…
Please, please, put a blank box, that we can check, if we want to give the best answer…
and if we don’t select a best answer, we pay a 3 point penalty. Bot no one picks a stupid answer for us.
Right now, someone picks a stupid answer and it still costs you 3 points. How, illogical. Why, does it make sense to you? How, do you arrive to your reasoning?
How I wish, people would like fairness, and show concern for the people making the questions. They are totally, at a disadvantage. They are going to be up for 8 days anyways.
Why, treat them unjustly. Let them seek their best answer for as long as you provide time for the question and let them choose to check mark if they want some irked answer for their best answer. A best answer is not a best answer just because the majority or one says so, unless they have been given the right by the question seeker…by not checking the box. ( depending on difinition of such box, )
You don’t get it, Huh?
what really needs to happen is us being able to see how many best answers we have in each section, instead the only way to see is to either only answer questions from a particular category, count up every answer we have given, or just get in the top ten in a section, and even then we are not sure how many best answers we need to get in the top ten because we can’t see unless we count all of our answers up!
That is good news. That will stop a lot of late people answering just to score two points when a good answer has already been received.
Now if you can stop askers and repliers comments from ending up on other sites which pulls the Y!A RSS feeds then put ads on them that would be great.
Another change?!? I don’t quite understand this one..
so far so good
sorry 2 say that i hate the best answer time. for me, it should be up to the maximum time and up to the question’s owner to select the best answer. i hate when yahoo simply pick the best answer (when i think it’s not the best actually) for me. change this feature!
Wow good changes there, especially the best answer waiting time…
Sometimes it’s just that you like that answer so much that you want to give the 10 points right away!
I like the new option to submit straight away instead of having to go to preview, not too sure about lower the choose as best answer waiting time to 1 hour though.
it is good for all who need helpfull form yahoo.
Good work on this! As a dial up user, the preview page made answering a 4-5 minute job. Now that there is a submit button, I can post my answer right away and go one to other questions instead of staring at the loading bar for ages. And these updates have been delivered so smoothly! Most of the time, when there is an update, I can’t answer questions for hours. But this time, I have had no glitches since these upgrades! Keep up the good work!
I do like the changes, just one more I would love to see. When some one deletes a question I wish it could be taken off and not sit on the answer line for 4 days. It just clogs up the system.
When I ask a question & extend the question It only stays on an hour before it goes to vote
Great idea! Can you now work on reinstating those(me) who were wrongly banned from Y!A?
Not bad…yahoo is indeed a quick learner…lol
I’d prefer a system that penalizes you for NOT choosing a best answer. I love when I have the only correct answer and some doofus with several email accounts wins the “vote” 9 to 2.
it would be cool if we could comment on other peoples answers, or somehow let them know that we are replying to their comment.
I don’t like the changes either as some questions require in-depth answers not ill thought out or irrelevant ones.
Those changes are so great! It’s much quicker and easier without the preview page. Thanks alot
When are you going to fix the broken system. It’s tiresome to see the same questions for three days in a row, especially when some of them have post dates of months ago. Clicking on any category brings up nothing but old questions.
While cutting down the waiting time for selecting a best answer is good, I don’t like the idea of being able to submit an answer without an intermediate step. Too many typos and garbled ideas get through even with requiring people to take an additional step before submitting. Now with reviewing being optional, you will likely have postings that are even more incomprehensible than ever.
My questions wont stay on for answering past an hour even though I extend it. What is the problem here
What I propose Is that you are able to deleate questions even after they are closed……
thank you for your time
This weeks “Best of Answers” are horrible. Is this Yahoo for Kindergarteners? How do people not know the answer to some of these questions? And haven’t they heard of Google? Why don’t they just do a simple search and find the answer themselves. Society is getting so lazy.
I get the ”oops” thing to to fix it though (this is annoying)
i log out & go tools>internet options> delete browsing history/cookies/passwords etc etc
questions post fine after that but takes like 2 minutes to do
Jamies comment about the site sck…ng is typical of the too many sarcastic answers on the site. If Answers is REALLY SERIOUS about improving the site, a time censor should be installed so the answer and question can be scrutinized before it is seen. This will benefit everyone, particularly users who are on disability and the very young. This will block any insult to injury. Unfortunately a lot of intelligent questions ‘catch’ sarcasm. Too many unhappy people use the site.
Since the new changes were made ,I have been experiencing the following problems: 1)When I click on the email tab on the tool bar,it immediately closes the browser and I go through this several times 2) When I submit an answer,it always tells me that Yahoo Answers is experiencing technical difficulties—.Though it later credits me with the points but only after I go back and start the process all over again 3) Though I signed in ,my avater does not appear where I sign in at the toolbar 4)The cursor keeps jumping all over the place and when you try to scroll,it is erratic.Are these just teething problems which would be resolved as soon as you complete your system wide changes or are you already aware of thes issues and have solutions or are you working on them already.These problems ,at least for me ,only began after you started the changes.What gives.
Great changes, now, if you can just work on eliminating boring categories like polls and surveys!
Thanks YA this is great! I hope your reading this and see that we appreciate you guys!
I did have another suggestion. why not have an option to pick a worst answer? there seem to be a lot of “trollers” and pointless answers on Yahoo Answers. maybe that could be a way of preventing people from spamming? like if you ask a question and they just insult you and don’t give some kind of a real answer you could click worst answer and they would loose points?
Love the improvements. As always, great job Yahoo!
I loved your idea about the new program. This plan will help us have more answers to our problems. Just great
Good choice opting for omission of a preview, makes it faster, more efficient and less time-consuming.
Sorry, about that. I’ve been up for around 30 hours without sleep and I don’t know why I typed that. I do really like the changes you all have made. Keep up the good work.
Finally, I’ve been hoping you guys would do this forever. Thanks Yahoo!
We’ve kept the Preview page too, When I click on the email tab on the tool bar,it immediately closes the browser and I go through this several times, it would be cool if we could comment on other peoples answers