• [[Yahoo! Answers]] is the second-largest reference site on the web, providing a social network where people can ask and answer questions covering a broad range of topics.The New York Times: The Oracle Collective With over 25 million unique users a month, the free service (requires a [[Yahoo!]] account) provides an active forum that sometimes leads to strange, silly and sometimes unintelligent questions and answers.Yahoo! Answers: Yahoo! Answers Help Compete: Yahoo! Answers traffic analytics

  The open nature of the service--users can posts any question they like as long as it doesn't violate the community guidelines--means that some of the questions are silly, facetious, or so simple as to be answered with a quick search on a search engine. Likewise, anyone can answer any question, which can lead to rushed, slipshod answers, wrong answers, and joking or sarcastic answers. The combination of "dumb" questions and bad answers infuriates some users of the service and amuses others.Slate Magazine: A Librarian's Worst Nightmare (December 7, 2007) An entire Internet meme has been devoted to one strange question: "how is babby formed?"

• 1. Launched December 8, 2005
  2. Number 8 on Time Magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2008Time Magazine: 50 Best Websites 2008
  3. Largest English site devoted to questions and answersScience Daily: Users Of Yahoo Answers Seek Advice, Opinion, Expertise
  4. Second most popular reference website after WikipediaThe New York Times: The Oracle Collective

• Dangers of Dumb Answers

  A number of blog posts and articles are devoted to how frustrating and dangerous the bad answers at Yahoo! Answers can be. From parenting advice to financial suggestions, bloggers point out that the people asking the questions have little way to differentiate between good and bad answers, and bad answers can be potentially harmful.CreditMattersBlog.com: Yahoo! I Have Found The Mother Lode of Credit... (September 19, 2008) Mamas On The Web: Yahoo Answers Is Full of Morons (August 4, 2008) The general poor composition of questions and answers, which are often riddled with spelling errors, typos and sometimes gibberish, give ammunition to the critics of Yahoo! Answers as a research tool.Slate Magazine: A Librarian's Worst Nightmare (December 7, 2007)

Categories