Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven knowledge market website launched by Yahoo! on December 13, 2005 that allows users to ask and answer questions posed by other users. The site gives members the chance to earn points as a way to encourage participation. As of November 2006, it contains 65 million answers and more than 7 million questions.

Virtually any question is allowed, except ones that violate the Yahoo! Answers community guidelines. To encourage good answers, helpful participants are occasionally featured on the Yahoo! 360° blog page. 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.^[1] 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 either Yahoo! or Wikipedia.

The site is based in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Quebec, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. The site is available in the United States in both US English and US Spanish. The user's default language on Yahoo! is their default language on Answers. Users can also opt to only view questions on their native country's site.

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.^[2] 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 this encourages people to answer questions that they do not know the answer to, just to get points. On the other hand many people also ask pointless questions, just for the fun of it.

The point system encourages users to answer as many questions and ask as many questions as they possibly can, up to their daily limit. Once a user gets to level 3 or 4, if they are able to maintain a good 'best answer' percentage (above 10%) within a specific category they will receive an orange 'badge' under the name of their avatar naming them a "Top Contributor." A user can be a "Top Contributor" in up to three categories, listed on the user's profile page, which can change depending on the user's answering habits. However, 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. The psychological effect of acquiring points can be addictive, to the extent that Yahoo Answers becomes a major distraction from other work.

Level / points table

1. 1–249
2. 250–999
3. 1,000–2,499
4. 2,500–4,999
5. 5,000–9,999
6. 10,000–24,999
7. 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.^[3] On Answers profile pages, users can track how many stars they have received for their questions. However, a user may un-star a question at will. Users may also keep a separate watchlist of questions that is kept private.

Many users submit questions without searching in the archive resulting in a large quantity of duplicate questions. Even fewer questioners use a search engine to try to find information themselves. For example, in the New York City travel section, frequent answerers have expressed frustration with the repetitiveness of questions asking for cheap hotel recommendations.^[4] Users often react to obvious questions by copy-and-pasting text from websites including Wikipedia. This has become so common that the term "Wikipasting" has been coined by users. Also, the answers are appearing in Yahoo!'s own search query results. These often include questions that only received one answer. Yahoo! Answers inexplicably only shows related questions to the questions being typed but not search engine results from the Yahoo! search engine which could just as easily be shown and mostly likely provide an existing appropriate answer via another website.

Although a question may be answered immediately, often the answer is trite or unrelated. An exception may be when special guests ask questions; responses to these questions are commonly detailed, educated, and serious. A user may post a quick, unhelpful answer in response to a just-posted question in an attempt to claim the position of first answerer, which appears at the top of the column listing all answers. If the question appears to challenge some person or organization's philosophy or ideology, it is often answered with multiple insults, sometimes in the form of questions themselves about the questioner's own ideology. Questions and answers often contain racist or hateful comments, especially in categories like Politics,^[5] Immigration,^[6] and Culture & Groups.^[7] While Yahoo! censors most expletives, users can get around that by substituting symbols like an asterisk (*) or exclamation mark (!).

Points are rewarded for any answer posted, including mere insults, unrelated/unhelpful answers, inappropriate jokes, nonsensical statements, and questions in response to the question. There is no doubt that the rewarding of points for any type of answers has lead to community members posting answers not to help answer the question but as a quick way of boosting their Yahoo! Answers score.^[8] In addition, some users create more than one account and award points only between their two accounts by asking questions with the puppet account, answering with the primary account, and selecting their own answer as the "best answer". This is known as point-gaming. Point-gaming also includes incidents where people post "have two points" as well as vote stacking.

Occasionally, some older questions are answered after being "featured" or shown on the Yahoo! Answers home page. There is little means to differentiate between hard and easy-to-answer questions, as the number of points awarded for a correct answer is fixed, unlike on sites such as Experts Exchange.

Unlike on EE, there is no concept of "point splitting," i.e., only a single answer may be chosen as "best." This implies a design mindset that neglects situations where two answers could address different facets of a problem or where one user's answer could build on the insight of another's. There are questions' where "best answer" is chosen naively. Some askers will not read through all of the answers. In the event that the asker does not choose a best answer, voters will on occasion choose the first answer as the "best answer" regardless of the response - since users earn 1 point for voting for a best answer. Yahoo officially prohibits vote-rigging through the use of multiple accounts by the same user, although in reality this is not always enforceable. Because users can easily email questions to others, there is no policy against vote solicitation/stacking.

While a question is open for answering, users may edit or delete their own answers. Questioners may also add "Additional details" to their question after it is asked, in response to answerers who write that they need more information to give a proper response. However, there is no diff system as there is on Wikipedia. Additionally, user handles on Answers do not need to correspond with their Yahoo! email username, and can be changed at will.

It is common for users to post entire questions from their coursework at all school levels.^[9] Indeed, there is a section of the site called "Homework Help," although homework questions appear throughout the site. These questions are sometimes ignored, or angrily answered with comments such as "do your own homework!"^[10] However, they often also elicit helpful and complete replies. Thus far there have been no reports of students being penalized for the obvious Honor Code violations involved.

Questions and answers can be reported by users as a breach of the guidelines. Yahoo! maintains that a customer care representative reviews each abuse report submitted by users.^[11] This is disputed by some Yahoo! Answers users who claim that they received warnings about violations where the stated reason for the violation was inaccurate. Users have also complained about deletions of posts that were not in violation of the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS) or the Yahoo! Answers Community Guidelines.

One common criticism is that it is easy to get a question or answer removed that is not in violation of Yahoo!'s Community Guidelines. Allegedly the more people that rate a posting as abusive the more likely it is to be removed. Some users maintain that questions are automatically deleted when a certain number of complaints are received, although the Answers Team states that this is not the case.^[12] The Yahoo! Answers Team does provide a process by which users can appeal deletions of questions and answers^[13], but many users are not satisfied that appeals are adequately addressed.

Another complaint is that the response to content posted on Answers that is determined to be abusive is not limited to Answers, but can, at Yahoo!'s discretion, result in deactivation of the Yahoo! ID associated with the offending Answers account. Many Answers users also use other Yahoo! services, and deactivation of their Yahoo! ID effects all Yahoo! services the user accesses under that ID. As of March 15, 2007, Yahoo! has merged with the photo sharing site Flickr, and both use the same Yahoo! Account ID. So if a user's Yahoo! Account is suspended, then they are unable to access the Flickr site that uses that same Account ID. Even if they are paying for a pro account and have not violated the terms of Flickr, they still will be denied access.

Related to account suspension/deactivation, some users claim that Yahoo! Answers are deactivated without warning, which could end up causing the user to be cut off from his Yahoo! Answers network (which consists of various contacts including fans and friends). There have been several cases where users have tried to contact Yahoo! customer care over the phone when they don't receive any email response but find they are required to pay a fee for a response.^[14]

The Distorted View Podcast runs an informal "Sabotage Yahoo Answers" contest where the goal is to post the "Most extreme and unbelievable" questions and answers[12]. At least four Distorted View fans have had their Yahoo accounts deleted as a result of these activities. The prevalence of this behavior is unknown, but an archive [13] of known "gag" questions and answers exists, usually containing profanity and obscene content.

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. This is called the Featured User section. The blog usually talks about the user's activity on the website, as well as a little bit about the user's hobbies. When a user is selected as a Featured User, he/she is sent an e-mail, asking for some details like hobbies, interests, occupation, etc. The user is usually expected to give a few comments on Yahoo! Answers as well. The user is expected to reply to the message appropriately, and the blog is put up in a few weeks. The Blog is on the Yahoo! 360° service.

Yahoo! Answers also has a "Best of Answers" section, in which Yahoo! staff pick questions that have been answered with a particularly highly rated "best answer."

Beginning July 2, 2007, Yahoo! Answers began featuring weekly video segments called "Yahoo! Answers On The Street." Hosted by J. 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. A new episode is posted every Monday, with previous episodes archived.

Several celebrities and notables have appeared on Yahoo! Answers to Ask or Answer questions. These users have an "official" badge below their avatar and on their profile page. The list of Special Guests has included well-recognized celebrities and intellectuals, such as Marilyn vos Savant, the Guinness record holder for highest IQ.

Some of other celebrities that have Asked and/or Answered questions on the site:

• Yahoo! Answers official site
• The Best of Answers 2006
• Official Yahoo! Answers blog on Yahoo! 360°
• Yahoo! Answers Help and Suggestions Board
• Yahoo! Answers scoring system
• Yahoo! Answers Leaderboard
• Article in New York Times
• Article In Search Engine Watch
• Answers API
• Python wrapper over Answers API
• Ask Yahoo!, Yahoo!'s former Q&A site, now merged with Answers
• Yahoo! Answers On The Street