Yahoo! Answers

Friday we let you know that Answers would be unavailable Monday, May 16 for several hours. We are happy to share that all maintenance has now been completed and the site is available again.

We apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks so much for your patience!

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Yahoo! Answers is undergoing some essential planned maintenance on Monday, May 16 starting at 2am ET, 7am BST, 11.30am IST and lasting several hours. Answers will be unavailable during that time. The Suggestion Board will not be affected by this.

If there is any change to the schedule, we will inform you here with updates. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused – we assure you this work is essential.

If you’re looking for something to do during the downtime, why not…

• Peek at the adorable bunny rabbit on Flickr
• Check out 11 remakes of the original cookie — the Oreo
• See who’s kicking butt in the NBA Playoffs on Sports
• Search for ‘zombie ants’ it’s quite interesting

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Cue “Here Comes the Bride”: The wedding season will be here before you know it and what better way to start than the wedding of the decade. This week, as the world watches Prince William and Kate Middleton say “I do,” we invite you to Yahoo! Answers Royal Wedding Week.

As Prince William and Kate walk down the aisle this Friday, April 29, we’d like to hear your stories, secrets, and tips from your special day or upcoming nuptials.

To celebrate the most anticipated wedding, we’ll ask three questions this week and encourage you to share your moments and/or dreams. In addition, we’ll award the winning answers 100 bonus points.

The first question is about a moment that no one will ever forget…

Question:  How did your significant other propose to you?

Royal wedding photos
To see pictures of the royal family, please visit our Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishmonarchy/

And much more
If you can’t get enough of all the Royal Wedding hype, check out our Royal Wedding Yahoo! Page for more details and information including the schedule of events for the big day!

Check back on Wednesday and Friday for our second and third wedding question!

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C’mon, Join the fun. Enter the Yahoo! Messenger Faceoff Contest Today!

Do you love emoticons as much as our 500,000+ Yahoo! Messenger Facebook fans do? From now through March 18th, show us your best emoticon impression for a chance to have your face turned into a brand new Yahoo! Messenger emoticon to be added to the Yahoo! Messenger emoticon gallery.

Check out the Yahoo! Messenger Faceoff Contest on our Facebook fan page.  Join the fun by simply submitting a photo of yourself imitating your favorite emoticon. Then encourage friends and family to vote for your submission in the Faceoff gallery or to submit their own photos if they think they can do better!  After two rounds of voting, the winner with the most votes will have their face turned into a brand new emoticon for the world to use.

Go ahead – show the world your best smiley! If you’re too shy to submit a photo, visit the Faceoff gallery to vote for your favorites and support your friends.

Which emoticon are YOU?

- Yahoo! Messenger Team

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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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