Yahoo! Answers

There are many reasons to love Yahoo! Answers. Some thrive on providing helpful answers that benefit the community. Others enjoy the access to so much useful knowledge with a simple click. If you’re an expert in a specific area, why not share what you know and become a Top Contributor? A Top Contributor is a member of the community who has shown that they are knowledgeable in a particular category.

How can I become a Top Contributor?

With a little dedication, you too can earn a Top Contributor badge. Check out Answers and pick categories in which you have the most expertise (you can be a Top Contributor in up to three categories). Answering questions in the most informative way will increase your chances of getting the Best Answer–and the more you actively participate, the better your chances of earning a Top Contributor badge. Remember that the Top Contributor badge is dynamic, which means that you earn it or lose it depending on your recent participation in a particular category. If you stop participating, you will lose your badge. To recover your badge, you have to increase your activity in a specific category again.

Most community members on the Answers Leaderboard happen to be Top Contributors. The Leaderboard allows you to see who’s in the lead and what their stats are. It’s updated every week. Who knows? With a little work, you might make it there, too!

Keep in mind that while sharing what you know is encouraged, it is also important to make sure you don’t share anything that puts your answer in violation of the Community Guidelines.

Have more questions? Leave us a comment and let us know!

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It’s already been a year and a half since we launched Community Moderation on Answers. Every day, trusted users work together to report and remove any content that violates the Community Guidelines and Yahoo! Terms of Service. Since this is one of the topics that regularly appears in the forum, here’s a refresher for those who would like to take part.

How does Community Moderation work?

Before:

Any user could report abusive content on Answers. A Yahoo! employee then reviewed the report and decided whether to keep or to delete the content. This system is still in place.

Now:

Thanks to Community Moderation, our efforts to control abusive content on Answers have greatly increased. Once a report is submitted to Yahoo!, Community Moderation measures the reputation of both the reporter and the person being reported. The system then determines whether it can remove the reported item directly from the site based on community input or whether further review is needed.

How does the reputation system work?

You must be very familiar with the Community Guidelines in order to become one of our trusted Answers users. As you develop a better idea about what’s acceptable on Answers and begin to report content, you will build a good reputation and gain influence. The more accurate your reporting, the higher your reputation will become.

However, if you abuse Community Moderation, your reputation will suffer. With a low reputation, your power to report and remove potential abuse will be reduced, which could result in a suspension.

The community is very important to the Answers team. Without it, the site is nothing, so we have set up protection mechanisms to filter out specific targeting of one user by another. Similarly, the system promotes accurate reporters, giving them more influence.

How does the appeal system work?

Although very effective, Community Moderation is not perfect. Incorrect reports will occasionally happen and some users will find their content erroneously deleted. If your question or answer is reported, we’ll send you an email stating that it has been removed. If you feel that the system was mistaken, first read the Community Guidelines to double-check. If you still think there’s a strong case, click the “Appeal” link in the email to submit an appeal. This will be reviewed by a Yahoo! employee. If we agree, your question or answer will reappear on Answers, and whoever reported you will have less influence when they report abuse in the future.

We highly encourage you to appeal if you’ve read the Community Guidelines and are sure your content has been removed in error. If your appeal is successful, not only will your content be reinstated, but also your reputation will be boosted and those that reported you will lose influence. Of course, we would advise you not to appeal for the sake of appealing, either. If your content truly deserved to be deleted, it is very unlikely we will put it back on the site just because you’ve appealed.

How do I report spam content?

Easy! Report an abuse and indicate that it’s spam. You might remember that we used to ask you to report spam on the forum. The Community Moderation system is faster and will help you improve your reputation if you report correctly, so reporting spam using the “Report abuse” button is beneficial for everyone.

That’s our update on how Community Moderation works. We hope you found this helpful!

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There are various ways to communicate with us and find more information about Yahoo! Answers.

What do I need to know?

The Community Guidelines and the Terms of Service (TOS) are good places to start. They contain the rules and guidelines we must all adhere to as members of the Answers community.You can find links to them at the bottom of all Yahoo! Answers pages. If you are about to post something,but are not sure if it violates the Community Guidelines, you can double-check from that handy link.

Where do I go if I want to make an appeal?

If your content has been deleted and -after reading the Community Guidelines and the TOS – you think it was a mistake, click the “appeal” link that appears in the notification email and explain why the content should not have been taken down. We’ll be happy to review it!

What if I don’t know how to do something?

We have created the Help pages for that reason. You can find information about how to use Answers and its various features. Just browse the categories to find what you’re looking for.

If you cannot find an answer to your question in Help, go to the Forum  or to the Yahoo! Answers category. This category was especially created for you to ask the community about things you don’t know how to do. The community is always happy to help, and the most experienced members are eager to share their knowledge.

How can I be the first to know about what’s happening on Answers?

The blog is your place. You’ll find the latest news, tips, and other interesting topics from the Answers community. Subscribe via the RSS feed and never miss another post.

How do I provide feedback?

There are a few avenues: Post a comment to the blog, go to the Forum, or make a suggestion on the form linked from the “Tell us what you think” link at the bottom of each page. We will be happy to review your ideas for improving Answers!

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Last week’s post about avatar games stirred up some strong reactions to the rules regarding chat in the Community Guidelines. So what do we have against chat? Absolutely nothing. Chat away on Yahoo! Messenger or Groups—just not on Answers. We’re not trying to be mean or limit free speech —we just want to maintain the mission of Yahoo! Answers:

Yahoo! Answers connects people to the information they’re seeking with those who know it. Everyone has life experience and knowledge about something, and Yahoo! Answers provides a way for people to share their experience and insight.

Like any other community, we have a core set of principles that must be followed by all members. Some of those core principles are: sharing what you know, being courteous, and asking clear questions. Examples of unacceptable behavior include: ranting, hate speech, cheating, behaving maliciously, and chatting. If you want to participate in Answers, we ask that you abide by the Community Guidelines and Yahoo! Terms of Service.

While chatting seems innocuous in comparison to more-obvious offenses, we discourage it because it doesn’t add to the intent of the site: to share quality knowledge. Answers was never meant to function as a chat room or forum. There are other outlets (like Yahoo! Groups) that are ideal for this type of social networking, and we hope you’ll channel your inner chat into these more-appropriate venues.

Still unsure about what’s considered chat? Here are a few examples to help clear up the confusion:

Chatty: “Do you like my poem?”

Better: “How can I improve my poem?”

Chatty: “Do you like my avatar?”

Better: “How do I make my avatar look more fun or attractive?”

The Guidelines weren’t created as a cloaked attempt to exercise ultimate universal power over Answers members—really. They’re meant to provide commonsense ground rules so we all know what to expect inside the Yahoo! Answers community. That’s not such a bad thing, is it?

Instead of having to report abuse, wouldn’t you much rather see it prevented in the first place?

UPDATE: Just to clarify, it’s fine to be conversational within your actual question or answer.

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We might like your avatar, but we don’t want to answer questions about it. We’ve blogged before about the fine line some questions straddle between offering up a legitimate poll query and falling into violation territory. But after seeing the ongoing confusion and annoyance in the forum displayed over avatar games, we thought it was time to tackle the subject again.

Previously, we tried to gently persuade aspiring pollsters to use alternatives for burning questions about who has the prettiest avatar. Now let us be a little more direct: Do not play avatar games on Yahoo! Answers—it is a violation of the Community Guidelines. Why is it a violation? Because it’s considered chat.

According to the guidelines, examples of chat include:

• How are you today?
• What are you doing?
• Do you like my avatar?

See? It’s right there in the guidelines, so there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind—avatar games (including “Vote for the best above/below” avatar questions) do not belong in Yahoo! Answers and should be reported as abuse. More appropriate chat and game outlets are Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Games, and Yahoo! Messenger.

We really want Answers to be an informative, engaging, and enjoyable place to be. By sticking to the guidelines, we hope to foster an environment everyone can live with and learn from.

OK, lecture time is over.

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