Yahoo Answers
The site gives members the chance to earn points as a way to encourage participation and is based on Naver's Knowledge iN. On June 11, 2007, Yahoo!'s former questions and answers service, Ask Yahoo!, was formally merged with Yahoo! Answers..
Though the service itself is free, the content of answers are owned by the respective users—while Yahoo! maintains a non-exclusive royalty-free worldwide right to publish the information. Chat is explicitly forbidden in the Community Guidelines, although users may choose to reveal their Yahoo! Messenger ID on their Answers profile page.
In order to open an account a user needs a Yahoo! ID, but can use any name as identification on Yahoo! Answers. A user can also be represented by a Yahoo! avatar or a Yahoo! 360° picture.
When answering a question, a pull-down menu allows one to choose to search all over the Internet.
Questions are initially open to answers for three days. However the asker can choose to close the question after a minimum of four hours or extend it for a period of up to seven days. To ask a question one has to have a Yahoo! account with a positive score balance.
The points system is weighted to encourage users to answer questions and to limit spam questions.
There are also levels (with point thresholds) which give more site access. Aside from this, points and levels have no real world value, cannot be traded, and serve only to indicate how active a user has been on the site. A notable downside to the points/level side is that it encourages people to answer questions even when they do not have a suitable answer to give, in order to gain points.
On the other hand, many people ask questions not to gain more knowledge.
The point system encourages users to answer as many questions as they possibly can, up to their daily limit. Once a user shows that they are knowledgeable within a specific category they may receive an orange 'badge' under the name of their avatar naming them a "Top Contributor".
The user can then lose this badge if they do not maintain their level and quality of participation.. Once a user becomes a "Top Contributor" in any category, the badge appears in all answers, questions, and comments by the user regardless of category.
Level / points table
1–249
250–999
1,000–2,499
2,500–4,999
5,000–9,999
10,000–24,999
25,000+
Points are earned as per following Points Table:
Voting and rating with "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" is done anonymously, and once done cannot be changed.
Users may tag an interesting question with a star, and the list of users who have so tagged a question is made public. On Answers profile pages, users can track how many stars they have received for their questions. In the event a question is deleted, any stars it had at the time of deletion are still credited to the askers account.
Users may also keep a separate watchlist of questions that is kept private.
Highlighting users
From time to time, the Yahoo! Answers team selects a user from the millions who use the feature and writes a blog about him/her in the Yahoo! Answers Blog. The user is usually expected to give a few comments on Yahoo! Answers as well.
Keith van Straaten, the 3-4 minute videos draw on questions from the Answers community and mix together expert interviews with comedic man-on-the-street pieces. Based on the ability to accurately report content that violates the Yahoo! Answers community guidelines , users are assigned a reporting status as either trusted or untrusted.
The higher the reporting power, the stronger this user's influence is concerning the removal of reported content. The site has also been criticized for lack of oversight on the banning of user accounts.
Trolls who create multiple accounts specifically target random users and click on the "Report Abuse" button. Note that according to community guidelines, only "knowledge-worthy" questions are allowed on Yahoo! Answers.
This has generated some criticism among the users, but those who try to inquire about this are served by the staff with a twisted logic to make the questions seem appropriate.
Special guests
Several celebrities and notables have appeared on Yahoo! Answers to ask questions. These users have an "official" badge below their avatar and on their profile page.