Yahoo! Answers

In case nobody has noticed, there’s a new addition to the site at the bottom of the links to the right.  Yahoo! Answers is currently in beta and is a community website where anybody can go to ask/answer questions on just about any subject.

I’ve been answering a few and it’s somewhat satisfying when your answer is chosen as the “Best Answer” over that of the other participants.  Yahoo’s incentive to visitors to participate is a point system that rewards you for various things like answering questions, voting on a best answer, and rating other peoples answers.  They’ve even gone so far as to establish a leaderboard that shows who is leading the way in points in total and for that week (I’m nowhere near the top).

Yahoo! answers is similiar to Google Answers, but I think the main difference is the community that’s built up around Yahoo! Answers.  Whereas Google’s site is tailored more towards having the questioner (cool word huh?) pay a small fee to have an actual professional research and answer your question, Yahoo! allows anybody with an account to answer your, or anybody elses, question.  While it may seem like this type of system could lead to frivoulous replies, thanks to the point system above, you can usually get a decent answer to your question.

So, if you’ve got a question, ask it! Usually an answer is given within an hour or so by any number of Yahoo! Answers participants.  I primarily answer questions in the Programming & Design category.