Yahoo! Answers

Welcome to Answers on the Streets: Episode 9!

Now here’s a question that can stump a lot of people. Geography guru? Well watch below and see how many people have a difficult time answering this one question.

Think you have a better answer? We definitely know our community has some great ideas. You’ve heard their answers, now we want to hear from you!

Give us a shout and tell us what you think. Just click the question below to submit your response.

Question: How far east can you go before you’re heading west?

Episode 8 Winner

Congrats to Mike for Episode 8’s Best Answer. Here’s his answer:

First step: assume it was a mistake. “Excuse me, there’s a line here.” Nice and polite and works around 80% of the time. Most time a cut in is a simple error where the person has made a mistake. And if it’s not a mistake, it gives the offender a way out before I destroy their dignity.
Second step, escalate. Louder voice: “I think you haven’t have heard me, so I’ll speak up. There’s a line here and we’ve all been waiting.”
Third step, humiliation. “Oh, so you think you’re more important than us! Your time is more valuable than the rest of us! If you’re so important, why are you standing in line like the rest of us, Mr El Presidente? Why don’t you have your own special line if you’re that important? Maybe you would like me to walk in front of you with a bell: Make way! Make way! Get out of the way, peasants! An important person is coming through!”

Normally halfway through this rant, he will leave or the rest of the line will start joining in or laughing at him. Either way, good result.

Of course, it helps to be big, tall and just a little bit crazy looking.

Get Featured

You can be the next winner and get 200 EXTRA POINTS and get recognized on our Answers Blog. Heck, if you have a webcam and we like your video, we may even feature a video of you on our Answers Blog! We’re not the only ones that can make videos. Simply upload your video here. In submitting your video keep in mind your obligations under the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Also, you must be at least 18 years old to submit a video.

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Hey Guys,

Watch baseball with someone new to the sport and you’re bound to hear one thing over and over: “Why do the players spit so much? What in the world is wrong with these slobs?” It is a fascinating, albeit gross, question to ponder. Why do baseball players expectorate more than other pro athletes?

Not being a professional baseball player, I can’t offer much in the way of an authoritative answer. However, I can tell you that fewer and fewer players are spitting tobacco juice. While the practice has yet to be banned in the big leagues, use is down among Major League players. That decline may be due in part to the ban at the minor league level.

So, if it’s not tobacco juice, then what in the world is responsible for all the free-flying saliva? Sunflower seeds? Bubblegum juice? How about both? According to a blog from Cleveland.com, when big league baseball stopped providing players with tobacco, the teams started providing players with sunflower seeds and chewing gum. The blog explains that in a single season, the Cleveland Indians “will go through 12 cases of sunflower seeds and 10 cases of Bazooka bubble gum (regular and sugarless).”

OK, but why do they have to spit? One blogger thinks it might be a holdover from times past. Players don’t really “need” to spit anymore, but they do anyway, because it’s just part of the culture. Another theory — the players are bored, so they spit like there’s no tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll never know, just like we’ll never know why players “adjust” themselves so often.

What are your theories as to why baseball players spit so much? Boredom? Tradition? Something else? Save your saliva and please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Once again, it’s time for our annual Answers Halloween Costume Contest. Last year, we had awesome winners and we can’t wait to see what you come up with this year!

Download the Yamster avatar and dress him up for Halloween!

Picnik which is built directly into Yahoo’s own Flickr, offers a plethora of accessories that you can use to deck out Yamster. You can also use something like Microsoft Paint, Photoshop, SumoPaint, or any other paint program on the market to edit or enhance an image.

Once you’re through dressing up your Yamster, save the image (right click and “save as”) and upload it to your Flickr account. Then, add the image to the Answers Halloween pool—found here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/yahooanswershalloween2010/.

In order to see all the fun dressed-up Yamsters, please make sure to join the Answers Halloween 2010 group.

Submissions must be received by 5 p.m. PST on Monday, November 1st. Winner(s) will be posted on the Yahoo! Answers Blog and will receive 200 bonus points on Yahoo! Answers.

Rules:

• Yamsters must be submitted to Flickr by 5 p.m. PST on November 1st

• All images must be in compliance with Yahoo’s TOS, Yahoo! Answers Community Guidelines, Flickr’s Community Guidelines, and must not contain mature or adult content

• Submitted images may only be that of the Yamster—no actual photographs will be accepted or considered

• No real value is given to this prize: winner(s) will receive 200 bonus points on Yahoo! Answers

• Join the Answers Halloween 2010 group in order to see everyone’s entries

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Changes to how we display edited answers

**UPDATE: Thanks for all of your feedback on edited answers. We acknowledge you prefer keeping the ordering and we will make some changes soon to reflect your concerns.

When you are in a supermarket you’d be frustrated if someone put a `place-holder` down at the till and then went to do their shopping before `jumping the queue` as they had a placeholder.

Well, in a similar way we hear one of your frustrations on providing answers to the site is when people `place-hold` a position and use edit to provide a later answer, or to copy an answer from someone else. We feel this is unfair to misuse Answers like this and have now added a timestamp to show that someone has edited their answer. To make it fairer to others who spend time writing their answer in full before posting we will now re-order all edited answers to what is the latest position at time of editing.

Why can’t we just show the edits? We don’t have a logical place where we can show how an answer has changed over time and things like highlighting changes with a different color are quite difficult to show in a way that someone new to answers will understand. We also don’t want to prevent editing like we do currently on the question details as that will prevent you from fixing things like spelling mistakes.

Now we know it can be frustrating if you just want to make one small spelling correction but this is why you are given the opportunity to preview your answer, as per when you ask a question. If you find you are often editing after you answer, it may be worth using the preview just to have one last check before you submit.

Finally, we are going to monitor this change. If we find it does have a detrimental effect, then we may consider making further changes in the future.

Changes to the default images on Yahoo!

You may have noticed we have added a little bit of color to the grey face icons which show when no avatar or image is selected.

Yahoo! is in the process of updating these default images across the network. If you haven’t chosen an image or if your Pulse profile is set to `hidden`, you’ll see one of the five variations of this new image to represent you. The colors are teal, blue, green, orange and purple. It’s totally random which one you get and is nothing to do with your gender or activity.

Please leave us your comments on this small change.

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Have you ever wondered, “If only I had an easier way to find answers for my questions when I’m out and about.” Now, the wait is officially over!

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve created a brand new mobile site and it’s ready for you to use. Everything you love about Yahoo! Answers is now available on-the-go.

Will it work on my phone?

The new mobile-optimized version of Yahoo! Answers makes it easy for you to keep track of points, open questions, and stay on top of what people are asking wherever and whenever the mood grabs you. Our new mobile site will work with most phones but you’ll see it at its very best on the newest phones, such as iPhone, Android and the latest Blackberrys.

See it in action

We’ve put together this short video, to show you why we’re so excited…

With Yahoo! Answers optimized for mobile, you can:

• Ask, Answer, and Discover questions as you would on the computer
• Vote and select a best answer
• Easily access your profile, points, and open questions to check on your activity
• Check out new open questions being asked every second
• Rack up more points when you’re out and about

We hope you’re as excited about the mobile version of Yahoo! Answers as we are. Give it a try today!  To check it out, visit www.answers.yahoo.com on your phone.

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