Yahoo! Philippines Answers blog

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 6th 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 and Facebook 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: http://ph.answers.yahoo.com/dir/index;_ylt=AhmfuQJe8U_JDZ6vh8m1U4of3IlQ;_ylv=3

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.

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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:

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.

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Our editorial team recently had a chance to sit down and chat with actress, singer, host and UN national ambassador Miss KC Concepcion.

Of course, we didn’t forget to involve you in the interview, that’s why a few weeks ago we asked the Answers community if you had a chance to interview KC, what would you ask her.  Well, she did answer some of what you posted.  Watch this video and find out if KC answered your question:

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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.

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Flickr image by Stitch

Yahoo! Answers is undergoing some essential planned maintenance on Wednesday November 3 at 4pm-8pm. 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…

• See some cool photos of the country on Flickr
• Read exciting posts from Yahoo! News
• Discover interesting people and places on Koprol
• Check out inspiring travel stories on Yahoo! Travel

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Changes to how we display edited answers

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.

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Have you ever wondered to yourself, “If only I had Yahoo! Answers right now… I could find out the answer to my question?” 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 optimized for on-the-go availability.

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 PC
• 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!

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It was recently reported by Yahoo! Philippines News that the Philippines broke a world record for most simultaneously erupting soda geysers.

The previous record set by Mexico fo 2,433 soda fountains was beaten when exactly 2,856 Pinoy students from various universities in Metro Manila took part in the event held at the SM Mall of Asia.

To produce the soda geysers, students dropped Mentos candies into a soda bottle (usually a 1.5 or 2-liter bottle) at the same time to set off the fountain.

Click here to read more about the story

Reading this news article, it made me think, what other world records does the Philippines holds?  I did a couple of searches and gathered these amazing facts:

• Not new to us but still a record we’re all proud of, Manny Pacquiao holds the record for the most boxing world titles in different weight divisions.
• The largest dance class recorded in history took place in Cebu City when the Dancesport-Team led a class of 7,770 participants at the Cebu City Sports Center last June 27, 2009.
• The largest average usage of SMS or text by mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines with an average of 27 texts sent per day by subscriber.

What other world records do you think the Philippines or Pinoys hold or have achieved throughout the years?  Share the good ones in the comments below and let’s see if we can come up with a bigger list of Pinoy world records we can truly be proud of!

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