Displaying posts tagged with: Announcements

Yahoo! Answers planned maintenance on Tuesday, September 13

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(Flickr photo by General Wesc)

Hello everyone,

Yahoo! Answers is undergoing some essential planned maintenance on Tuesday, September 13 starting at 1pm, and lasting several hours. Answers will be unavailable during that time. The Suggestion Board will not be affected by this.

Meanwhile, please check out these Yahoo! pages and:

We apologize for the inconvenience.

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Maintenance is now completed

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Last week, 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!

Now back to your regular asking and answering. :)

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Yahoo! Answers planned maintenance on Monday, May 16th

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(Flickr photo by General Wesc)

Hello everyone,

Yahoo! Answers will be unavailable Monday, 16 May, from 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., due to planned maintenance. If there is any change to this schedule, we will update the information here.

Meanwhile, please check out these Yahoo! pages and:

We apologize for the inconvenience.

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How do we choose the Best of Answers?

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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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Inspiration 2011

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2011 has just begun and this is traditionally the time when everyone sets resolutions that they want to fulfill in the coming year. Whether you want to climb a serious mountain, finally try out grandma’s cake recipe that has been lying around for ages, or plan to do something good for your local community, now’s your moment. Think about what you are planning and if you’re inspired, why not share your aspirations by answering this question:

What will you do to make 2011 special?

Pictures paint a thousand words, as the expression goes, so that’s why we created the Flickr group “Inspiration 2011”. Here you can look at what other people have been thinking of or share photos that represent your inspiration and the goal you want to achieve in 2011.


www.flickr.com

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Changes to desktop and mobile

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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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Hiding your Pulse profile

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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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Changes to the My Activity Page

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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.

New Profile Page

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.

Activity Tab

4 – Activity Details

On the old My Activity 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.

Network Q&A

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

edit_pref

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!

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Yahoo! Answers planned maintenance on Wednesday, November 3rd

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Flickr image by Stitch

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…

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Earn points by saving your search

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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 specialist 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:

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.  :)

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