Yahoo! Answers

Here on Answers our mission is to share knowledge and advice within the community in an environment that respects the Community Guidelines.  Recently we’ve seen a rise in point gaming, along with ongoing complaints about cheaters and users creating multiple accounts, and have decided to remind users that this type of abuse is taken seriously by Yahoo! Answers and is against the Community Guidelines.
What is considered cheating?

• Posting and answering your own content by creating multiple accounts for the sole purpose of earning points.
• Soliciting others to increase points.
• Copying another user’s content and pasting it as your own.

Our point system rewards community members for sharing and questions and answers, the above items violate the Community Guidelines and lowers the integrity of the site.   Misusing Answers hurts the community members.

When people use Answers to cheat or to point game, it lowers the quality of the site and defeats the knowledge-sharing purpose of the site. By sticking to the guidelines and reporting abuse, we can all make Yahoo! Answers an informative and enjoyable place to be.

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In July, we announced we were going to start featuring a user each month. Someone that goes above and beyond, providing great content on Answers. Well, thanks to the community we received tons of nominations! We admit it took us some time to narrow it down. In September, we’ll start featuring two users a month. So again, thank you all who nominated someone or nominated themselves. It was a tough decision!

So now let’s introduce our August featured user…

Jade Orchid. She’s been a member since 2006 and is a Top Contributor in Horses.

Ready to enter Jade-world?

Okemah's famous Hot & Cold towers

“Although born in Mesa, Arizona I work as a liquor store manager in what I consider to by my hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. The birthplace of Woody Guthrie, and home to the annual Woody Guthrie Festival, my town is small and fairly quiet with a rich, and sometimes strange, history. I live here with my fiancé, Stephen, and my daughter Eirynn, who was practically born while I was using Y! Answers.”

“I’m a master of nothing but I’m skilled at a variety of things; my life is very eclectic, to say the least. My fiancé says I’m a “jack-of-all-trades” but I feel my true talents and gifts are the desire to learn, a natural curiosity, a will to try new things and succeed, and the desire to help others”

“I’ve worked as a nurse’s aide, a cook and waitress, a professional housekeeper, a retail clerk, a secretary, and I’ve owned my own business besides what I’m doing now. I love creative crafts like drawing, painting, photography, sewing, and beadwork. Board games, tabletop games, and video games are also something I greatly enjoy and play when I have some spare time. I’m also an avid outdoor enthusiast who loves to fish, hunt, rock climb, kayak (I’m my hometown’s only urban kayaker), camp, and hike. I also like to study prehistoric man and survival techniques like flint knapping, primitive hunting and building techniques, and herbal medicine”

Meet Jade!

“Another true passion of mine is animals. I’ve been privileged and blessed in my life to have been able to raise many domestic animals such as pigs, goats, cows, chickens, ducks, and geese, just to name a few. I’m also able to boast experience with wolves and wolf hybrids, both in their natural state and in captivity, and being able to participate in wild animal rehabilitation. My real joy, though, are horses; of which I own three, Monty, Brutus, and Dakota”

Top Contributor - Horses

Jade and Answers

“In the first year of being on Y! Answers I started the first user based group dedicated to Y! Answers, Yahoo Answerholics Anonymous, or the “Answerholics” for short as a place to discuss Y! Answers and chat with other members. I invite anyone who loves Y! Answers to join. Over the past six years I have answered questions in almost every category, but I favor the Horses and Beer, Wine, and Spirits categories. My personal favorite questions and answers are:

Am I a wuss for wanting to throw in the towel and take my maternity leave? – This is one of my favorite questions because I asked this question hours before giving birth to my daughter. Boy, did I feel lousy. LOL

Why does peroxide bubble? – This is my one of my favorite questions because I felt it was thought provoking. I was the first person to ask a question about it on Y! Answers.

If your pet could talk… What would it say? – This is one of my favorite best answers because, well, it’s pretty funny and you know that’s EXACTLY what your pet is thinking. LOL Sometimes I just love to answer silly questions that are just plain fun.

What is in Reliance Horse Feed? – This is one of my favorite best answers because it is a supreme example of how far I’m willing to go to answer the “unanswerable”. I spent three days researching and calling around to feed companies to find out the ingredients and nutritional content of this particular brand of horse feed. It’s not the first time I’ve spent days researching an answer and it won’t be the last time, I’m sure.”

Thanks for reading,

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Hey Guys,

When you love to sing, but have no talent for it, there is only one place to go – the bathtub. When I sing/caterwaul in the shower I’ve noticed that I don’t sound quite as horrendous as I normally do. Is there a scientific reason behind this miracle?

Actually, there is. It has less to do with the steam of water, and more to do with the confined space. According to the San Francisco Exploratorium, a person’s voice improves in small spaces because the sound waves bounce off the walls. Those reflections help to produces a richer sound.

The Exploratorium puts it like this: “The blurring of your voice by multiple reflections — or reverb — has an added benefit: It helps to even out variations in pitch — useful if you don’t so much ‘hit’ notes as wander around near them.” It’s a bit like a “low tech sound mixer.”

The same basic premise applies to singing in cars. When you’re belting out tunes while driving, the voice coming in over the stereo helps to drown out any missed notes. If you ever want a reality check, do what I do. Sing along with the radio and then mute it while still singing. The results can be humiliating but entertaining.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Here on Yahoo! Answers we get lots of questions about what makes a person attractive.  Is it physical beauty, personality, common interests, or money?  What makes us approach others is physical attraction, but what makes us like and eventually fall in love is confidence.

So what does being confident mean?  What does it feel and look like?  According to merriam-webster.com self confidence is “confidence in oneself and in one’s powers and abilities” or in simple terms you are fine to be who you really are, without shame or embarrassment.

Fear and rejection are one of the many reasons many people lack confidence.  But being confident is not synonymous for perfection.  Instead, it’s about loving yourself, not being afraid of rejection, accepting your flaws, but working on improving them, and not relying on others to determine your self worth.  People that come across as confident know what they want in terms of goals, relationships and life, and this in turn projects, strength, courage, security, intelligence and maturity.  It’s the opposite of neediness, clinginess, insecurity and attention seeking behavior.  The former qualities are alluring and intriguing, it eases and gives us comfort because the person isn’t seeking validation, she or he is whole, and will handle the ups and downs of a relationship.

In order to have confidence you have to have a solid sense of who you are.  In other words you see the real person, but that doesn’t mean you tell everything about yourself at once – the opposite in fact, there is no rush.  Real love can be cherished and maintained when you can open your heart and not be judged, but accepted with an equally open heart.

So, how do you discover your true self? What prevents you from being yourself?  Do you ever find yourself pretending to be someone else in your professional and personal relationships?  And why do you think confidence is so attractive??  Please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

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While we all know that teachers have an amazing way of doing a lot with a little, at Yahoo! we wanted to find our own way to help support the awesome initiatives happening in our schools by providing teachers with even more resources to help their students succeed.

After all, among our global community of users are people who are passionate about helping students and teachers thrive. Last November we decided to tap into that passion by introducing Yahoo! Homepages for Homerooms – an easy, no-cost way for people to get funding for classrooms and teachers simply by making Yahoo! their homepage.

And today, we are excited to announce that we are bringing the program back this year! Starting today, you’ll have more than one good reason to make Yahoo! your homepage: daily access to the Web’s most premium content and the opportunity to support funding for an educational project.

As part of the Homepages for Homerooms program, Yahoo! is partnering with DonorsChoose.org, a reputable education non-profit that reaches 40% of schools in the U.S. and has helped raise over $85M in funding for U.S. public schools.

Now through October 16, public school teachers who place a project on DonorsChoose.org will be eligible to receive funding for their projects from Yahoo!. During this period, Yahoo! will donate $200,000 across the projects that generate the most support.  Anyone can support a project by making Yahoo! their homepage, and additionally, by participating in bi-weekly extra credit challenges.

Getting involved is quick, easy, and not to mention, free. If you are a teacher who already has a project posted on DonorsChoose.org, you’re all set – you are immediately eligible to participate in Homepages for Homerooms. If you don’t have a project already submitted but are seeking funding for your educational project, visit www.donorschoose.org to enter.

Once you’re up and running, start encouraging the members of your community to make Yahoo! their homepage in support of your DonorsChoose.org project. We’ll do our part by rallying supporters across our network and promoting the program amongst our vast community of users, connecting you with people interested in supporting projects like yours.

Yahoo! combines the actions of many into one big wave of change. In this case, we’re making it easy for people to support education. That’s another example of How Good Grows on Yahoo!.

Three easy steps to supporting a teacher’s project:

1) Visit yahoo.homepagesforhomerooms.com/projects and find a project you’d like to support.

2) Click “Support” and follow the steps to make Yahoo! your homepage. Each person may participate once.

3) Spread the word via Facebook, Twitter, word-of-mouth and more so your project of choice can get the funding it deserves.

Here’s to another great school year!

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