How do we choose the Best of Answers?
Many of you show a lot of interest in the content that appears in the “Best of Answers” module and often ask how this is selected and what decisions go into what we choose to highlight. Today, we’d like to tell you more about this prominent module on the Yahoo! Answers homepage. Follow us behind the scenes!
Firstly, the module called “Best of Answers” actually features a number of different types of content; so let’s start with an overview of each of these types:
Best of Answers
The purpose of the “Best of Answers” module is to highlight the most interesting questions posted by you, the community. We can use this to feature either open or resolved questions. Of course, if we choose a resolved question then we include the first few lines of the best answer too.
For this module we really look for content that’s unique or unusual. The kind of content that makes us go “Whoa, I always wondered that!”
Special Feature
The Special Feature template is used to highlight questions that are being promoted by our team. Examples include Celebrity questions or official questions asked with our Team account (i.e. Safer Internet Day).
Featured Sponsor
As you’d expect from the name, these feature questions asked by one of our Sponsors or Knowledge Partners.
Featured Content
We use this space to surface posts from our blog or to our pages on Facebook or Twitter.
How can you make it onto the Best of Answers?
We check the site every day for interesting questions, but that’s not the only way we select what we feature. In fact, we encourage you to submit any content you think deserves to appear on the Yahoo! Answers homepage. Have you found an interesting or quirky question? Have you provided a fantastic answer and helped someone out? Send it to y_answrs_favorites@yahoo.com and it might be selected to appear on the Yahoo! Answers homepage!
To increase chances of being featured:
- The question, resolved or closed, should be of general interest, and ideally something that is not widely known
- The answer should not be easily found on the internet
- Try finding questions showing unique or experience-based knowledge
- Ensure that an avatar or a personal image is used
- Make sure the content is clear and well expressed
- And last but not least, the content needs to abide by our Community Guidelines and the Terms of Service.
We hope this overview will give you a better understanding of how we choose content to as the `Best of Answers`.
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Answers needs to select a politically charged question for Best of Answers.
I wish there was some way to pick the voter’s answer, a little better, sometimes there are all 20s or all 50s and this causes a tie, and no one then seems willing to choose the best of the answers when they are marked this way. Couldn’t someone judge between them and pick a best answer and give that one the higher number? Anything to avoid those ties.
hmm yea i guess that helps out a bit, there will always be controversy. Yahoo answers has a huge community!
I think the only way I should vote for the best answer is to pick the one I think would be most helpful to the person asking the question. It should not be based on whether I am bored reading the same thing over and over. Afterall the answer is for the person asking the question not for my entertainment. Now sometimes they are a lot of good answers and it is very difficult to pick the best.
When I vote for the best answer, I try to ensure that the question was truly answered. At times, I am guilty of providing so much information that I have to retreat and see if I did answer the question. One of my problems is when the answers are so short, and devoid of feeling, the people responding seem to have little or no attachment to the asker. Perhaps I am a little too involved, but I approach my answers as I do my students – full attention and prepared to help as best I can.
I think to choose best of answer from the great yahoo answer is not a easy task. It requires many skills and follow up. We have to see to cover all the best answer through out the year. So, first thing is the declaration time should be the first week of February of the next year, so that we can cover all the best answer from January to December. Prior to selecting the top 10 answer of the year we have to select the top 10 answer of every month. At the end of the year there will be 120 answer and we can select 10 top answer of the year from this 120 answer. From the 1St January to 31St January all the 120 answer to be advertised in yahoo answer for voting.
I think this will help us in selecting the top 10 answer.
Funny how so few people read the content and mis-read the heading.
To Jo Ann Fischer, the problem is that nobody can see how many votes which answer has before they vote… also, the fact that there are many different opinions that would affect the best answer. Sometimes, there are different opinions (preferences of different options… color, taste, look, whatever) that one person may prefer an option suggested by one answer while someone else may prefer a different option.
Another issue is personal bias. Granted, this comes more into play into the more controversial categories (religion, politics, sex, and alternative medicine are the biggest ones I’ve come across), but it still exists in culture-based categories (food, fashion, and such). It’s not necessarily bad, but the more people that vote, the more questions get resolved.
There are also a number of Yahoo groups that are dedicated to voting and resolving questions. Most of them focus on a particular category for a few weeks to knock down the unresolved questions in that category, but some (mostly the small ones) focus on just one category long-term to keep them at manageable sizes.
Yeah, it would be nice if some executive team just resolved the questions like this, but it would be such a daunting task with the hundreds of thousands of questions that are asked here every week.
Of course, if we choose a resolved question then we include the first few lines of the est answer too. For this module we really look for