uk.answers.yahoo.com > Reviews > Who has an answer for everything?

Author's product rating:   

Quality of Discussions

Excellent

Advantages:	Easy to use interface, no cost, specific answers to specific questions .
Disadvantages:	Need a yahoo ID .  Some idiotic replies .  Answers only as good as question .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Fed up of getting advert after advert through google or askjeeves? Asking a simple question via search engines often leads you up the garden path to sites and information that just does not fit your needs. Yahoo Answers may well be the answer for you. Only set up in the last couple of months Yahoo Answers is an ingenious idea on yahoo's part. At its simplest it is potentially the world's largest, all encompassing forum and at its most complex could be considered the worlds most useful encyclopaedia.

What makes Yahoo Answers different from search engines and online encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia is that you can ask a specific question and get specific answers from the members browsing the forum. Have a question about where to find a printer driver? simply type in your question, click on post and await the floods of answers. Has your child got some homework to research that you just cannot find the answer to? Post the question here and watch as the results appear.

By no means is Yahoo Answers a flawless experience. This is a site in which humans post questions and get all too human answers. Some answers may be flippant, abusive, spam like or unrelated to your question. Similarly you answers are only as good as the question asked so if you are looking for a laptop asking, "Where can I buy a laptop?" will not suffice. Not unless you want one word replies of "eBay" or "PC World". As with any site with a human response it is all in the phrasing. Yahoo Answers encourages you to be specific with plenty of room to explain yourself so if you want to know something laptop being specific yields great results. Referring back to the laptop example, asking "My wife needs a laptop for her midwifery course, it needs to be less than £400 and only needs to be able to access the Internet and Word Process. Where can I buy one from?" gives precise and helpful advice by the bucketful.

I have found Yahoo Answers to be an excellent resource. Accessing the site i simple with the only registration required being a yahoo account which I already have for email (free). The site navigates quickly and has a simplistic layout being a white background with blue and green writing. The fonts are large enough so there is no need to alter them via Firefox and moving pages is done via one click and categories neatly divided and sub-divided. There is literally nothing you cannot ask and get an answer to hear be it philosophical or spiritual questions or how to get from Liverpool to London it is all here.

It is nice to see this site also has zero advertising which is a rarity on yahoo itself and abusive replies are swiftly dealt with thanks to a report button on each post. In effect the members self-moderate. Perhaps, the only problem I can see in the future is the points system they currently have in place. These "community points" seem to be yahoo's way of encouraging members to respond to questions. By voting for best answers and responding to questions points are awarded while asking questions deducts points. I have already noted members being competitive seeking to answer every and any question whether they know the answer or not. This often leads to pointless links to websites. Of course, the biggest fear people will have is misinformation and this is certainly mine. Every answer must not be taken as gospel and I always research the facts of what people have to say. However, much like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire's "Ask the Audience", the consensus is usually correct.

All in all I like Yahoo Answers and use it a lot. It is a lazy way of accessing an online encyclopaedia, in which real people answer your questions. And, it often yields answers more reputable resources such as Wikipedia.org would not find. Okay, so you get the odd idiot but on the whole its a site were members help each other so when they need help themselves, that help is forthcoming. A site you will find yourself visiting again and again.