Yahoo! Philippines Answers blog

Over the last few days, we’ve been rolling out a new design to the category pages that should help you find the questions you care about more quickly.  Starting today, these changes will be a permanent feature in your Answers experience.

Here are some of the changes that we have made:

• Easier Category Navigation: We’ve moved the list of categories and subcategories to the top of the page instead of listing down the left-hand side. This should make it easier for you to move to a different category without needing to scroll down the page.
• More Space on the Page: Just like we did with the question page last year, we wanted to offer you more space in the category page by moving to a wider page design which is optimized for a higher screen resolution.
• More Prominent Leaderboard: Who doesn’t want to be famous?  The right-hand side of the page now lists the top 10 answerers for the category or subcategory you are browsing.  We wanted to give more prominence not only to the category leader, but to rest of the top contributing answerers as well.  We also heard from you guys that when a category was being sponsored you still wanted to be able to see how you were doing in that category’s Leaderboards. The new category design allows this.
• More Prominent Question List:  You visit the category page to look for questions to answer, right?  We’ve made the question list wider and more visible to help youyou’re your answers in there faster.
• Sort by “Most Popular” Questions – We’ve added a “most popular” sort filter on the sidebar so you can see what the community is most interested in with just one click.
• Sticky Question Tabs – Open, resolved, and in voting tabs are now “sticky,” meaning that as you move between categories, your tab choice will persist for the session even as you vote for questions in different categories.

We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for you to use and participate in Answers, and we hope these changes continue to help you find the questions that may be most interesting to you.

As always (but especially when we change stuff on Answers) we would love to know what you think. So why don’t you check out the new category page and leave us a comment with your feedback?  Thanks everyone!

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I believe it’s not a secret that one of the most addicting and engaging reasons people come back to Yahoo! Answers is because it’s a great platform to share your experiences and knowledge by answering other people’s questions.  Everyone benefits from people who post really good answers and to get more people to do this, we’re sharing to you the five golden rules about answering questions.  Here are THE rules to ensure quality-answers which will certainly contribute to making Answers a relevant place to ask questions:

1. Remember that you are answering to help the asker: Don’t answer just for the sake of getting points or to advertise your own questions to the community.  If you don’t know the answer, skip to a question you may be more knowledgeable about.  And remember, we now have suggested questions for active users.  These are questions that will automatically appear on your homepage.

2. Be polite and respectful: No one likes to be ridiculed and insulted.  If you don’t agree with the question, offer your point of view in a constructive and respectful way.  Answers IS a diverse community where everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If YOU FEEL THAT a question or answer violates the community guidelines, report it.

3. Use correct spelling: Avoid text lingo and grammatical errors.  An answer filled with spelling mistakes and typos is confusing and doesn’t improve the Answers quality.  The more understandable your answer is, the higher the opportunities it has to be chosen as best answer or make an impression on someone else.

4. Be relevant: Don’t digress or change the subject when answering a question.  Give a concise answer that sticks to the point.

5. Link to existing sources that have the answer to the question: If you know an excellent website or book that might help, mention it – as long as it’s not spam of course.  Also cite your sources, they are always helpful if anyone wants more information.

If you want to know more about it, don’t hesitate to visit our community guidelines and our help pages.  Feel free also to share with the community some good questions or answers that you found on the site in your comments to this post.

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Recently we’d had feedback that a few glitches on the site have been impacting on the overall experience for many of you, which we apologize for.

So, like an automobile that occasionally needs to be sent to the mechanics for some re-tuning,  we had to send Answers into the garage for a little bit of maintenance.

We’ve now taken it off the blocks and here are the fixes you will see since this latest release:

• Many of you were not regularly receiving immediate email notifications when your network posted a question.  We appreciate how vital it is to get your questions to your Answers network and we have now fixed this to ensure everyone should receive the emails on time.
• One bug that has been a frustration to many of you for a while now is the ability of people you have added to your ‘Blocked users’ list to still be able to post answers to your questions.  This will no longer happen.  Blocked users will no longer be able to answer your questions — we’re sure some of you will be delighted by this!
• When questions are in voting, we’d noticed the total number of votes were not adding up correctly.  After sending the Yamster on a quick mathematics course, we now have the correct totals back on display again.
• A couple of months ago, we introduced inactive hyperlinks for Level 1 users.  To continue to protect everyone using our site against potentially malicious links we’ve made some improvements to this functionality to ensure the right to post hyperlinks really is only earned by trust.
• One piece of feedback we regularly hear is that you want more information on why content has been deleted.  We’ve now refreshed the Violation Notifications that we send to inform you of your content being deleted.  These will now include more details about the actual violation that was committed and hope this will help you better understand why your content was removed from the site.  Remember, all content on the site must be within the community guidelines (hyperlink to CG’s).

Finally, we’ve also laid the groundwork for some more radical changes to certain parts of the site design… so watch this space!

Keep your feedback coming, and we’ll continue to work on keeping the site well oiled!  Thanks everyone!

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Hi everyone,

The Yahoo! Answers Team are excited to announce a small but significant change to the site. As of today, any links posted by Level 1 Answers users will not be hyperlinked.

It may seem like a trivial change but it is an important step to limit the impact of spam on Answers. The site has had a points and levels system since it’s inception, which aims to promote activity and trust. Only hyperlinking http URLs from users who are Level 2 and above is a new way to reward an protect our core contributors.

The lack of hyperlinking applies to any link that begins http:// – links that are posted that begin www. are already not hyperlinked for all users regardless of level. We appreciate that removing hyperlinking for level 1 users is not a final or a perfect solution. For example long URLs are currently being truncated but we are working on further updates to improve this.

We’ve taken this action in response to clear user feedback, from you the Answers community. And rest assured that this is just one of a number of initiatives we are implementing to limit the impact of spam on Answers. We hope it’s a small step towards making Answers a better place. We’d welcome your feedback this change.

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Let’s do this YAPpers!  Many thanks to everyone that left a comment and shared their thoughts regarding the possibility of a meet up of the Pinoy community here in Yahoo! Answers!  Because of your feedback, we’re making this a reality.  Let’s have a Pinoy Answers Community Meet Up next month!  Here are the details:

Who: Yahoo! Philippines Answers Users
What: Yahoo! Philippines Answers Community Meet Up!
When: July 18, 2008, 7:30pm
Where: Makati City (specific place to be announced later)

Anyone who wants to attend, just email me the following:

1. Full name:
2. Yahoo! Answers ID:
3. Mobile number:

You can email me at jonasdelosreyes@ymail.com.  Feel free to leave a comment as well if there’s anything else you want to share to me and the community (like venue suggestion maybe, if you’re willing to assist in organizing this, etc.)

Btw, I think YAPpers as a name for Pinoys in Yahoo! Answers is so cool!  Thanks for informing me about it Japs!  And thanks to all the YAPpers!  Hope to see all of you soon!

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Actually, it’s a question that every Pinoy here in Answers should answer.  Is it time for us to have a community meet up or not?  I’m just starting to meet all of you online but I’m sure it will be more exciting if we have an offline event, a meet up of the Pinoy Community in Yahoo! Answers!

Of course, this question raises a string of related questions.  When do we schedule the meet up?  I’m thinking July, but is it too soon or just right?  How about August?  We can have dinner in a restaurant, which leads to the next important question.  Where can we have our meet up?  I’m thinking in a restaurant in Makati City?  If not maybe Ortigas or Quezon City?  Any particular restaurant you have in mind?  Of course, I also want to have a meet up in Cebu (lived there for three years!), and definitely in Davao (can’t forget my Dabawenyo friends, hehehe), definitely in succeeding meet ups.

So share me your thoughts on this as we organize our first Pinoy Answers Community Meet Up.  I’ll make sure to book the place for the event, ensure there’s food and drinks for everyone, prepare an exciting and un-boring program, and bring lots of Yahoo! giveaways to give away!  Hope to see everyone soon!

UPDATE: There’s a big chance I’ll be in the Philippines this July 17 and 18 (a Thursday and a Friday), maybe we can set the Meet Up on the 18th of July, a Friday evening maybe?

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Hi everyone, please take note of this important announcement.  The Answers engineers are scheduled to perform regular maintenance on Thursday, June 19 at 2pm.  We expect the work to last for an hour so Answers will be temporarily inaccessible during this period.

Sorry for any inconvenience.  I’ll keep you posted if there are any changes to the schedule.  In the meantime, if you are looking for something else to do during this time (aside from reading my previous posts in this blog, hehehe), why not check out some of our other sites and services, such as:

• Flickr (now with video!)
• Yahoo! Pinoy Connect (Find new ways to stay closer to your family and friends, wherever they are.)
• Yahoo! oneSearch for mobile (Discover this cool mobile service and try it now!)

….or maybe you can check out what’s the latest in the news.  Thanks for bearing with us!

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Thank you to everyone who gave an answer to the question I posted last Independence Day.  It was a simple and yet profound question that all Pinoys should ask themselves – “what is the one thing that makes you proud to be a Filipino?”  And I’m so happy to say that 118 of you took time to answer it!

I really had a great time reading all the answers and one thing I noticed which made me realize something, I only asked for one thing that makes us proud to be Pinoys and yet a lot of you gave more than one answer.  It’s not that you didn’t follow instructions, but I believe it’s more because there was really more than just one reason for us to be proud of who we are!  We really should learn to always count our blessings.

Speaking of blessings, I would like to congratulate Sparkspill for getting the best answer (since it was for Independence Day, I decided to be democratic and let everyone vote for it).  I didn’t announce this before but I’m feeling extra generous lately so for giving the best answer, I’m sending Sparkspill some Yahoo! gifts as prize for his answer!  Congrats Sparkspill, make sure you reply to my email and I’ll send the stuff right away.

To everyone else, don’t you worry because this won’t be the last time this happens.  I’ll be giving away prizes every now and then and will keep you informed about it.  Again, thank you so much for all your answers.  So let’s all continue to be active in asking and answering questions posted by our fellow Pinoys.  The successful Independence Day feature only goes to show that the Pinoy community is really growing in number and in activity here in Yahoo! Answers.  Which makes me think, is it time to have a Pinoy community meet up soon?  Hmm, what do you all think?

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Why do I ask? Well, I was checking some Answers statistics this morning and discovered some very interesting figures about Pinoys in the Answers community. The first and probably the best thing about the data is the growth of Pinoys in the Answers community has been phenomenal! It’s true, ithe graph that represented our growth rate was like a challenge to mountaineers, there was no way to go but up. This surely reflects the fact that Yahoo! is the country’s leading Internet company, reaching 85% of all online users in the Philippines.

The other thing about the figures that’s very noteworthy is not all Pinoys in the Philippines access Answers from the Yahoo! Philippines Answers website. This means they still go to the original Answers website which is, well, primarily for US users. Ever since Yahoo! launched Answers in 2005 as a community-driven knowledge market website, its users have grown exponentially and internationally. As the audience became more global, it was only fitting that local versions with a local voice that featured local flavors and local points of view are launched to cater to specific countries. Hence, Yahoo! Philippines Answers was launched in 2006 (along with other local versions around the world). This is a huge development but it seems to have been overlooked by many Pinoys.

Which brings us to the following questions: If you’re a Pinoy at home in the Philippines, where do you usually access Answers? From the Philippines website or the US website? If your answer is the latter, why go there and not the Philippines Answers site? If you’re a Pinoy living abroad, do you access Answers from the Philippines website or the local version where you are based? If your answer is the latter, why go there and not the Philippines Answers site?

Please take time to answer in the comment section below and do help me spread it around the community as well. Your answers will be very valuable in helping us improve Answers and ensuring that we all have a Pinoy-centric, indispensable online experience every time we log on to Yahoo! Answers.

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