Yahoo! Canada Answers Blog

We’ve made a few minor changes and bug fixes this week to both the desktop and mobile versions of Answers which we wanted to let you know about.

Here’s a rundown of the changes:

Mobile

Our new mobile experience has proven extremely popular with you all so far and many of you have given us feedback on what you’d like to see. Taking this into account we’ve made a few tweaks:
• You can now star questions from the question page on mobile

• We’ve now enabled `Show me another` on iPhone and Android. You can see further questions now by scrolling horizontally on each question page.

For those of you who use Android we want to let you know we’ve just created an Answers Android App! This is free to download and works on Android phones version 2.0 or above. Try it out by searching for “Yahoo! Answers” at the Android marketplace and let us know what you think of it!

Changes to the Desktop version of Answers

We’ve made a few cosmetic changes that you may see depending if you’re signed-in or signed-out of Answers. Let’s explain how these affect each page on the Answers site:

Choose Best Answer, Edit Answer & Additional details pages

We’ve updated these pages to our new look and feel that you see when asking or answering.  By improving the code behind these pages too this should resolve some of the issues that occasionally occurred with special characters and text wrapping.

Question Page changes

• Last month we made a change which moved edited answers to the bottom of the list. Due to your overwhelming response against this change we have reversed it. Now, when you edit an answer, we will display an edit time stamp but won’t move it to the bottom of the answer list. We feel this shows that the answer has been edited from the original submission without discouraging those who want to make genuine edits.

• Thumbs: We’ve had extensive feedback around thumbs and this month we made the first of several changes to the rating system. Further changes will come in the following months.

• Thumbs up and Thumbs down will now only show when you are signed in to Answers. When signed-out you will not see the Thumbs down icon but will see any positive ratings that have occurred. This is how the signed out experience will look:

• We’ve moved the Report Abuse away from the thumbs on all answers whether you are signed in or out. We hope this will stop you accidentally hitting the thumbs buttons when you mean to report abuse

• Also when signed out and visiting a voting page, we now display a sign in to vote button at the top of the page to make it clearer on how to vote for your preferred answer.

My Activity Page

We’ve made a small cosmetic change to the My Activity page and made some technical improvements to improve performance on this page.

• Your identity information has now been modified slightly. We’ve moved your stats information to the right and now your contact information, nickname and start date to the central column.

• We now collapse “About Me” on your private view of My Activity. This means your content is higher on the page than before.

• There should now be no delay with your avatar appearing on the My Activity page after you’ve updated it. Previously there was a delay of up to 10 minutes of avatars updating on the My Activity page, this will now be instant.

• We’ve heard from those of you with lots of answers, activity or contacts that retrieving this information in the new My Activity page can be problematic. We’ve made some tweaks here so should you should notice this is all displayed much smoother now.

• On rare occasions your nickname or avatar on the question page wasn’t taking you to My Activity page but to the public view. This is now fixed and you’ll no longer be taken to the public view of My Activity.

As always we’d love to hear your feedback on these changes and what you’d like to see on Answers.

Following last week’s changes to the My Activity Page, we have received several comments about showing the link to Pulse on your public profile page. Remember your profile on Yahoo! is no longer managed through Yahoo! Answers but is managed across Yahoo! through Pulse. Here is a quick reminder about how to control what information you share on Answers through Pulse.

Hiding your Pulse profile

You may notice there is no longer the option to choose whether you `Show link to my Profile Page`. This previously controlled whether you linked directly to your Pulse profile on Yahoo!

There is a link on the public view of the My Activity page to View Pulse which is active for everyone.

However the level of visibility you share about yourself on Pulse is controlled by you. This controls how you are viewed across all Yahoo! properties from `Settings `–> `Privacy` and the `Manage Privacy Settings` page within Pulse.

If you set this as `Hide my profile` then when someone view your Pulse profile they will only be shown the following:

Images and Avatars

Pulse manages all your images and avatars for your specific Yahoo! properties that you use.

Your avatar will be hidden if you have checked “hide my profile” on your Pulse privacy settings and an exclamation mark will be shown instead.

If you want your avatar visible to others you have to have your nickname/avatar visible and the hide option unchecked for your image to be visible on Yahoo! Answers.

We hope this clarifies how this setting works. Here in the Answers team we’re focusing on enhancing the Q&A experience for you, this means we need to leave the profile aspect to the Pulse team. If you need further advice on the settings within Pulse, check out their help pages.

Thanks to everyone for creating these amazing Yamster costumes and for taking the time to vote. We received a total of 23,902 votes for our fantastic nominees! Since we liked the nominees’ and winners’ entries so much, we will also be rewarding each nominee 50 points. Nominees and winners: please check your Flickr email so we can award you points!

It is now our honor to announce the Yamster Halloween Costume Contest winners!

Overall Winner (500 points)

WINNER: YA’MI THE YAMATAR

Is the Yamster ill? Has the Yamster been drinking paint? Could it be both? Nope, it’s “Avatar” Yamster, or should we say, “Yamatar.” This remarkable transformation from rodent to alien somehow seems so realistic, like Yamster had always been blue and from another planet! Congratulations to this well-deserved winner.

Scariest Yamster (200 points)

WINNER: ZOMBIE YAMSTER

The Scariest category was a hard-fought one, and Zombie Yamster is no exception, with a gnawed shoulder, nibbled ear, and stitched-up head. He really looks like he’s been in battle, though not quite so much as Headless Yamster, whose head has come clean off. And if we’re looking for culprits, we’d look to his left, as Machete Yamster looks well equipped enough to have committed the crime. But we’re not; we’re after a champ, and Zombie is our drop-dead winner. Be afraid, be furry afraid … sorry.

Most Creative Yamster (200 points)

WINNER: HARRY POTTER

Many of the Halloween Yamsters we see today could have been nominated in this category, but these three were well-deserved finalists: Gnome, Harry Potter, and Crystal Ball. We have to admit we thought Crystal Ball was a particularly strong contender, especially given how far it had come from being just a hamster, but Harry Potter Yamster must have cast a spell over you all as he powered through to win. Magic!

Best Classic Costume (200 points)

WINNER: MUMMY YAMSTER

One is as white as a sheet, one’s been mummified, and the other is just hanging out — Best Classic Costume is one hell of a category, and we’re not just talking about bats here. When our furry hamster friend became winged, fanged, and nocturnal, we thought he’d be in with a shout, but no, you guys had this one all wrapped up Egyptian-style: Congrats to Mr. Mummy.

Funniest Yamster (200 points)

WINNER: YAMSTER HILTON

Many of the Halloween Yamsters were funny, intentionally or not, but these three really tickled us and, it would seem, you guys, too. Grampster Yamster has sprouted quite the beard … and facial mole … and even ear hair. Elephant Yamster is a remarkable transformation — you’d barely know there was a hamster wedged in there. But the overall winner simply had to be a celebrity Yamster Hilton because — dare we say it? — it’s so bad, it’s funny.

Celebrity Yamster (200 points)

WINNER: KISS

Up until the last minute, we weren’t sure whether Lady Gaga, Kiss, or Justin Bieber was going to win. Gaga’s dazzling sunglasses and attire and Bieber’s cool shades and noteworthy hair were worthy foes to the ultimate winner: Kiss. In the end, the pop singers couldn’t outdo rock ‘n’ roll. Kiss Yamster blazes on in glory with his signature makeup and stuck-out tongue. Hard rock fans, unite!

Best Cartoon Costume (200 points)

WINNER: MARIO BROTHER

A legendary bear, a computer icon, and an international mouse — boy, the Yamster is getting the all-star treatment here. We quite like the Yamster going yellow and growing a black tail, but you guys loved the cheeky moustache, so Super Mario got the nod. Congratulations to all Nintendo fans everywhere!

Special Award for Innovation (200 points)

This could easily have been called the “Prize for Thinking Outside the Box.” This video was so good, we had to invent a category to honor it. Its mix of scary soundtrack and ghostly Yamsters floating about had us mesmerized. Congratulations!

We’re pleased to announce a new re-design of the My Activity page to freshen up the page as well as some changes to how you control who sees your content.

Follow this link (when signed in) to see your new My Activity page

As we’ve made quite a few changes we’ve broken this down for you by section, so let’s get started.

1 – Member Info

Avatar:

• Your avatar is now larger and now displays your Best Answer percentage right below it.

Activity Summary:

• We’ve removed the Activity Summary chart and simplified it so it’s now included at the top of this box.
• Your name is now displayed on the right side of your avatar with your registration date, level, and total points, points needed for the next level and how many points you earned this week.

We’ve kept the `How others see me` link so you can check how you are viewed publicly.

2 – My Statistics

• We’ve moved the My Statistics chart up the page and this will now show details around both your questions and answers.
• For you to keep track of how popular your questions are with the Answers community we now track how many of your questions have received stars.

3 – Your Q&A

• Your content now appears right below the user card. We haven’t changed what the functions of the tabs do, they still do the following:

o My Answers: The default tab that displays the five most recent questions you have answered. Want to see them all? Click on `More Answers`. You can sort these by all answers or best answers.

o My Questions: The Question tab displays the five most recent questions you have asked.

o My Starred Questions: The My Starred Questions tab displays the most recent questions you have starred. These can be sorted in order of the newest, oldest or questions with the most stars.

o Watchlist: The Watchlist tab displays the most recent questions that you are tracking.

4 – Activity Details

On the old Profile page, the Activity Summary tab and Activity Details tab were combined into the same module. We have now created a separate Activity Details module and it is placed right under your Q&A. From here, you’ll be able to peruse all of your recent activity on the site.

5 – My Network’s Q&A

With the new page we’ve brought all of your Network and your Network’s Q&A together towards the bottom of the page.

In addition we’ve made another change to how you share your questions and your Answers Network:

Sharing and Network

Many of you gave us feedback that you wanted more control over who you Share your Q&A and Answers Network with.

Now under Edit My Preferences, on the Privacy and Communications tab you have the option to share your Q&A and Network with:

• Everyone
• My Contacts and Fans
• My Contacts

As a reminder, contacts are people you add and fans are people who add you.

Tell us what you think

Once you’ve given the new My Activity page a test drive, tell us what you think! There will be more changes in the future so please give us your feedback. As always you’re welcome to leave your comments here, or on our Suggestion Board.

Thanks, and we hope you like it!

Last week, we asked you to dress up our Yamster for Halloween and boy, we’ve received some amazing entries. We were wowed by the creativity and effort that went into making our Yamster dressed up for Halloween and we want to thank everybody for their participation.

It is our honor to announce the nominees for this year’s Yamster Halloween Costume Contest. We want you to vote for your favorite entry per category. The last day to vote is next Wednesday, 11/11 at 5 PM PST.

And the nominees are (drum roll please…):

VOTE NOW FOR YOUR FAVORITE ENTRY PER CATEGORY!

Overall Winner:

Ya’mi the Yamatar, Joker, and Marilyn Monroe

Scariest Yamster:

I love you Yamster, Machete Yamster, Headless Yamster, and Zombie Yamster

Most Creative Yamster:

Gnome, Harry Potter, and Crystal Ball

Best Classic Costume Yamster:

Ghost, Mummy, and Bat

Funniest Yamster:

Grampster Yamster, Elephant Yamster, and Yamster Hilton

Celebrity Yamster:

Lady Gaga, Kiss, and Justin Bieber

Best Cartoon Costume Yamster:

Winnie the Pooh, Mario Brother, and Mickey Mouse

See some more entries in the slide show below and tell us what you think! In order to see all the fun dressed-up Yamsters, please make sure to join the Answers Halloween 2010 group.

Yahoo! Answers is undergoing some essential planned maintenance on Wednesday November 3 at 1am-5am PST. Answers will be unavailable during that time. The Suggestion Board will be unaffected 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…

• Bask in the glory of the parrot on Flickr
• Check out this week’s hottest new tunes at Yahoo! Music

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

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.

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…

What does it do?

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!

October is the month of the pink ribbon.

In fact, I myself have worn the pink ribbon proudly as I know many women who have been afflicted with breast cancer. Some of them bounced back to life after surgery or treatment and a few others succumbed to the disease.

So when I decided to write a blog post about breast cancer, I was absolutely certain that it would take me less than ten minutes to do so. After all, I knew stories about all these women. And I thought I was mighty pink because as a woman I knew how to protect myself. Right?

Wrong. As I started to write this post, I realized how little I actually knew about this deadly disease though it had touched my life often enough, albeit indirectly.

Photo by merfam

Worldwide, breast cancer comprises 10.4% of all cancer incidence among women, making it the most common type of non-skin cancer in women and the fifth most common cause of cancer death. This explains the number of awareness campaigns about breast cancer during the month of October.

And yet I was finding it difficult to write about breast cancer. So I decided to take a look at Answers.

It was no surprise that I found a list of commonly asked questions about breast cancer. I decided to post these questions so it could help women and men like me who know about breast cancer but are hardly aware of the facts relating to the disease.

Links to save a life!

Understand this cancer better so you can treat it on time if need be!

• How does breast cancer develop in women and what are the preventive measures for it?

• What are the symptoms of breast cancer and what are the consequences?

• What kind of tests or examinations should be done for breast cancer?

Three typical doubts about preventing and treating breast cancer

• Is it true that deodorants can cause breast cancer in women?

• Are there any Ayurvedic treatments for breast cancer?

• How exactly does breast feeding lower the risk of breast cancer?

Other useful links to understand breast cancer better

I may have breast cancer, what questions should I ask my doctor?

• http://www.medicinenet.com/breast_cancer/article.htm#1imayhave

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer

And here’s how you can help people with breast cancer. http://shine.yahoo.com/page/breast-cancer-awareness-2010!

So do you have a breast cancer story? Is there some knowledge about breast cancer you would like to share? Do send us your story at y_answrs_favorites@yahoo.com or leave us a comment.

Go pink!

Bhumika Anand – Community Manager, IN