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Honest question from someone who wasn’t an active participant in the community: Was Yahoo Answers ever good? My only memories of it was that was it was inevitab

by coolso 5y ago

Honest question from someone who wasn’t an active participant in the community: Was Yahoo Answers ever good? My only memories of it was that was it was inevitably the top of every single Google search result and I always found most of the answers to be incredibly low effort and of questionable nature.

drcongo 5y ago
No, it wasn't. It was a valiant attempt I think, but Yahoo users as a whole are definitely not the people you want answering any question. Then again, look at Quora which doesn't have that handicap but is still a dreadful experience.
1024core 5y ago
Yahoo Answers is what gave rise to communities like StackOverflow, Quora and StackExchange and other *Exchanges out there. They were the first Q & A site out there.
rootsudo 5y ago
It was good depending on what sort of question you asked. I saw many technical answers related to general programming, computers, reinstalling Windows/Linux to dating 101 general advice, cheating and more, it was general so it was fun. It was def geared towards a younger audience. I made many a friend from Answers onto Messenger/email penpal, it was a great funnel from one Yahoo service to another - back in the heyday Yahoo really was a walled garden that "didn't" feel like a walled garden, many services to tie you in the ecosystem but it didn't feel as insidious as adtech/google is today. If anything, it was a great learning curve and introduction to General computing as you still had to be somewhat technical - flickr, know how to edit photos, metadata, and more. Geocities, html, css, design photos, psd html templates, etc. The User Experience was quite the limitation, and I'm sure looking back via rose tinted glasses makes it seem glamours, but it's really something concerning when you remove all friction and barriers and allow Everyone to participate. On StackOverflow, people are generally nice, but ask a very newb question and not with a mentor and you'll have a bad experience. The other fun one was Expert Sex Change, - no wait, Experts-Exchange. The later was great for technical questions if you knew to scroll down past the paywall. tl;dr it was good in the beginning, around 2010-11 yahoo answers really went down, alongside most of Yahoo but was probably because it was so successful.

by coolso 5y ago

drcongo 5y ago

No, it wasn't. It was a valiant attempt I think, but Yahoo users as a whole are definitely not the people you want answering any question. Then again, look at Quora which doesn't have that handicap but is still a dreadful experience.

1024core 5y ago

Yahoo Answers is what gave rise to communities like StackOverflow, Quora and StackExchange and other *Exchanges out there. They were the first Q & A site out there.

rootsudo 5y ago

It was good depending on what sort of question you asked. I saw many technical answers related to general programming, computers, reinstalling Windows/Linux to dating 101 general advice, cheating and more, it was general so it was fun. It was def geared towards a younger audience. I made many a friend from Answers onto Messenger/email penpal, it was a great funnel from one Yahoo service to another - back in the heyday Yahoo really was a walled garden that "didn't" feel like a walled garden, many services to tie you in the ecosystem but it didn't feel as insidious as adtech/google is today. If anything, it was a great learning curve and introduction to General computing as you still had to be somewhat technical - flickr, know how to edit photos, metadata, and more. Geocities, html, css, design photos, psd html templates, etc. The User Experience was quite the limitation, and I'm sure looking back via rose tinted glasses makes it seem glamours, but it's really something concerning when you remove all friction and barriers and allow Everyone to participate. On StackOverflow, people are generally nice, but ask a very newb question and not with a mentor and you'll have a bad experience. The other fun one was Expert Sex Change, - no wait, Experts-Exchange. The later was great for technical questions if you knew to scroll down past the paywall. tl;dr it was good in the beginning, around 2010-11 yahoo answers really went down, alongside most of Yahoo but was probably because it was so successful.