Yahoo! Canada Answers Blog

Currently, as a pre-requisite to participate on Yahoo! Answers, we ask that you have a Yahoo! ID to sign-in to the Yahoo! network. This in turn is where your identity on both Yahoo! and Answers is managed from.

Now, as part of Yahoo’s moves to make the web a more social and open place we are opening up Answers to people with Google or Facebook IDs too.

We appreciate people don’t want to be overwhelmed by different logins for each site you want to participate in on the web and through a technology called OpenID we’re able to eliminate the need for multiple logins across different Web sites.

After you sign-in with your Google or Facebook ID you’ll be able to fully participate on Yahoo! Answers.

Check out this video to see how easy it is to sign-in with a Google or Facebook ID:

A few points to note:

• For existing Answers members you’ll still see all of your existing content when you login with your Yahoo! ID. However you also have the option to `bind` your Facebook/Gmail account with your Yahoo! account. If you choose to do this you’ll be able to see all of your Answers content when logged in with either your Gmail or Facebook account. Read this help page to find out how to do this*
• If you sign in with your Facebook ID you still control what is published to your Facebook feed from Answers through the checkbox on the ask/answer flow. Your activity on Answers will not automatically be published on your Facebook feed.
• OpenID isn’t available for the Mobile version of Answers just yet… we’re working on it though and we expect to make it available in the coming months
• All participants using Google or Facebook IDs will still be subject to our Yahoo! ToS and Answers Community Guidelines when contributing to the site.

For further information on Yahoo! Fast Pass check out the Yodel Anecdotal blog post: http://ycorpblog.com/2011/01/18/id-sign-in/

It’s Bonus time: Get Double Points for Your Answers Now!

For a strictly limited period, you can earn an extra 2 points for every question you answer.

‘Tis the time of year for saying “thank you”, giving gifts and rewarding hard work. Our way of saying “thank you” to you, the Yahoo! Answers community – for your hard work this year – comes in the form of this special bonus. Yes, it’s DOUBLE POINTS for every question you answer– four instead of two.

Why are we doing this?

We know you enjoy earning points on Yahoo! Answers, especially to move up through the levels. But we also know it can feel like slow progress at times, like a marathon… So, for a short while, we’re giving you the chance to sprint! With double points up for grabs, it’s a golden opportunity for you to make some big gains and go for the next level.

Has it started already? When does it end?

It’s live now from December 6^st and will last for a limited period of time. Want to know when it will end? Well, we’re going to keep that a secret for now…

However, if you follow us on Twitter we’ll give regular updates of how long is left…

We’ll also notify you here, on the blog, as soon as it closes. In the meantime, make the most of it!

How do I get started?

It couldn’t be easier to get involved. Just sign-in (or sign-up if you’ve not visited before) and start answering questions. The browse categories page is a great place to start.

Tell us what you think about our Double Point bonus

We think offering double points is something you will appreciate… we hope it’s not like one of those terrible Christmas presents you just want to put back under the tree. But do let us know what you really think – we won’t be offended, promise.

Also, do let us know what you think by leaving a comment.

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.

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!

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!

Many of you have topics close to your heart that you like to answer questions for on a regular basis.

My Saved Search is a great solution that helps you quickly find new questions on these specific subjects.

To assist you in finding these questions we’ve now launched a new email notification to alert you when new questions arise from your saved searches…

The Saved Search email

We’d like to introduce the new Saved Search email.

By opting in to receive the Saved Search email we will send a daily update whenever new questions meet your search criteria. You can opt-in to the receive the email from the Preferences – Privacy and Communications page.

Where there are questions available we’ll send through up to three questions for each search you’ve saved. By clicking through to your Saved Search on that subject you will continue to see the complete list of questions which is updated in real time.

My Saved Search

If you weren’t previously aware of My Saved Search, you may not be aware that you can easily earn 20 points by saving just three searches. Here is an overview of how the process works.

How to save your search

You can save your search from the following areas:

• The Search homepage
• Advanced Search page
• My Saved Search page

What can you do with My Saved Search?

From the My Saved Search page, you can now:

• Save up to 10 searches. The main pane displays the selected search in real time. The last sorting option you use is saved the next time you log in.

• Edit your searches to keep them up-to-date

• Delete your searches when you no longer need them

• Drag and drop to arrange your Saved Searches to get the most used ones at the top of the list.

• Manage these searches from the new Saved Search page by editing or deleting

• Get your Saved Searches delivered as a daily digest email

• Have the Yahoo! Trending Topic of the day included in your search results. You’ll notice one search already there which you didn’t search for. We’ve given you a `trending search` to start. This is a keyword based on what is trending from Yahoo! Search. It changes on a daily basis depending on what people are talking about on the web. The trending search can be deleted to give you full control of the 10 searches you save. However, beware that once you delete the trending search it will be removed forever.

As soon as you have 3 Saved Searches on your Saved Search page we will give you 20 points! However, this will only be awarded once.

So go ahead – let us do the legwork in finding questions to answer!

Have more questions? Let us know.

To continuing improving your Yahoo! Answers experience we have introduced a few small changes this week…

Changing time to choose a Best Answer

Based on your feedback to be able to resolve a question quicker, we have now reduced the wait time to choose a best answer from 4 hours to 1 hour. If you now receive multiple responses within an hour you can select one of those as your Best Answer, or choose to put the question to vote at this earlier stage.

The full lifecycle of a question won’t change – questions will still be open for 4 days and up to maximum of 8 days if you extend the expiration. This change gives you the option to resolve earlier or put to vote earlier. If you take no action to resolve or extend the question, the question will automatically go to vote for the Best Answer.

Optional Preview screen when answering questions

Many of you have commented that to you’d prefer an answering experience without having to see your response on the Preview page first. We are now able to offer this…

If you are signed-in with your Answers account and have answered at least one question before then when submitting your answer you can choose to Submit your response immediately without going to the Preview page first. We’ve kept the Preview page too, so you can still see how your response will look before publishing it.

What makes Yahoo! Answers unique is the avid involvement of the community it is YOU that provides the content so continue to ask, answer and vote!

Following last week’s changes to Search and the Fans/Contacts system we now have a few more changes to share with you…

Edit My Preferences page

To keep public information and your personal settings separate we’ve made further changes on the `Edit my preferences` pages.

As with the previous preference page you can still add your photo or avatar from here or change your screen name which will both be used across your Yahoo! experience.  We’ve made this page a little lighter to view by splitting out how you will be seen on Answers from your personal preferences on Privacy and Communications.

The Privacy and Communications tab gives you control to receive specific notifications such as when `someone becomes your fan` or when `there are new questions for My Saved Searches` – and whether you allow fans at all.

Hiding your 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!

This setting is now controlled across all Yahoo! properties from `Settings`–> `Privacy` and the `Manage Privacy Settings` page on Yahoo! Pulse.