Yahoo! Answers, A Librarian's Worst Nightmare

Slate has an interesting look at the realm of online question and answer forums. Yahoo! Answers is boasting over 120 million users and 400 million answers placing it just behind Wikipedia for most visited education/reference site on the internet. While this may be a great insight into crowd mentality and search preferences, it seems to be a "complete disaster as a traditional reference tool." "For educators fretting that the Internet is creating a generation of 'intellectual sluggards,' the problem isn't just that Yahoo!'s site helps ninth-graders cheat on their homework. It's that a lot of the time, it doesn't help them cheat all that well. [...] Like Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia isn't perfect. But for savvy browsers who know how to use it, Wikipedia is an invaluable source of factual information. In the last two years, there's been a heated debate over whether Wikipedia is as trustworthy as Encyclopedia Britannica. This obscures a crucial point: Wikipedia is at least reliable enough that such a question can be asked. Take my word for it--no one is going to make any such claims about Yahoo! Answers any time soon."

No

This [xkcd.com] is a librarian's worst nightmare.

Re:No

the internet population can be divided into two parts, those that use yahoo and those that don't.

Yes, it can also be divided into two other parts, those who think this post is 'funny', and those who don't.

Re:No

I remember when we used to say that about AOL...

Newbie. Many of us remember well the times before AOL and MSN dumped their user mass onto Internet.
When they were proprietary BBS networks, everthing was well in the world. Spam was almost non-existent, you didn't have to explain everything to the users, who were clever enough to figure out that inability to ping vax.ox.ac.uk didn't mean you had to reinstall your OS or call a guy in Bangalore to help you. The lion was grazing with the sheep. Or at least devouring them quietly.

The problem Yahoo Answers faces is that you can have trust or you can have anonymity, but you can't have both. In a small professional circle, you can generally trust the answers, because there are enough peers who would jump your shit if you gave wrong answers. In an anonymous world-wide forum, you can't. There's no accountability, and the volume is too high for peers to review anything. Especially if you get paid to provide answers, but NOT paid to provide corrections to answers.

If Yahoo! wants to gain credibility for their QA section, they need to introduce paid overseers that cross-check answers (and each other) and with the authority to add red ink comments inside other people's answers, axe payments to those who give wrong answers, and give a Yahoo! paid bonus to those who give extremely good answers.
Let the users see how well Yahoo! professionals (and not other sheep^Wusers) rate them.
This can only be successful if anonymity is dropped, and someone can't just create a new blank account if eventually booted or rated down (like the trolls do here on slashdot).

The paid answers model

... to gain credibility for their QA section, they need to introduce paid overseers ...

The paid answers model is a quite different model to the "worth what you pay for it" free answers model. Not only do you get better answers, but you often get more interesting, better-phrased questions.

Take a look [uclue.com] at [uclue.com] these [uclue.com] examples [uclue.com] from paid Q&A site uclue.com [uclue.com], for example.

Re:No

The internet can be divided into two parts: people who use argumentum ad populum and those who don't.

Get your answers here!

Answers: $5
Good Answers: $10
Correct Answers: $20
Well-researched Answers complete with reference: time and materials

Dumb looks are still free.

Re:Get your answers here!

At least that's better than the crap standard always trotted out - the "Encyclopedia Britannica:.

"been a heated debate over whether Wikipedia is as trustworthy as Encyclopedia Britannica"

Go and grab an older copy, and see all the crap that was in there as "science" - a lot of it with a racist bent, or advocating social darwinism. The newer editions aren't any better, in that errors continue to be propounded.

Case in point - back in the '70s, a joke article about "Thomas Crapper, inventor of the flush toilet" appeared in the April edition of Scientific American (iirc, it was in one of Martin Gardner's columns). The editors of Britannica, not knowing how to read a calendar, or being unfamiliar with April Fools (they could look it up :-) and with a total lack of awareness, republished it as fact for years and years, even though it was easy enough to disprove if they had done ANY secondary checking of facts. The book cited in the article didn't exist, though several others, all "full of crap" satirizations, did ...

Fuck Britanicca. Overpriced, high-pressure sales tactics ("buy the encyclopedia and it'll help your kids in school" ... yeah, right), built-in obsolescence, and a VERY slow update/corrections policy. By one estimate, 10% of all articles are off.

Re:Get your answers here!

Case in point - back in the '70s, a joke article about "Thomas Crapper, inventor of the flush toilet" appeared in the April edition of Scientific American (iirc, it was in one of Martin Gardner's columns).

Thomas Crapper craps up Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Fuck Britanicca. Overpriced, high-pressure sales tactics ("buy the encyclopedia and it'll help your kids in school" ... yeah, right), built-in obsolescence, and a VERY slow update/corrections policy. By one estimate, 10% of all articles are off.

I think Britanica is awesome. Sure, Wikipedia can be useful, but at some point, the bad writing just drives me nuts. In, Britannica the articles are generally well written. Paid, professional editors work wonders, and the lack of them is telling in Wikipedia.

Even the previously mentioned Crapper article, is well, crap. Two immediately horrible things jump out. First, a paragraph begins "Yet another purported explanation is that ". It's a choppy sentence that implies the tail end of an enumeration where none exists.

Why does it need to be?

I don't really use any of those Q&A type sites, but it seems to me that their purpose isn't to be a reference site. Their purpose is to be small, simple aid if you have nowhere better to look. As such, they seem to work and most of the time get you a decent answer, or at least a place to start. The fact is, for most questions in this world you don't need to do a great deal of research, you just want a quick close enough answer.

Re:Why does it need to be?

True. That's why if I want a well-researched answer, I submit my question as an Ask Slashdot article.

What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

How could a service that provides such vital information as this [yahoo.com], this [yahoo.com] and this [yahoo.com] ever be considered anything other than a vital font of knowledge?

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

A sampling of what I see on answers.yahoo.com (YMMV)

• Did the Milwaukee Brewers really just give or are in the process of giving Eric Gagne $10 million for 1 year?
• What is a hydroxide ion?
• I have TimeWarner Cable and got the HD Receiver...But I don't wanna pay monthly!?
• I need to find a free download, no buying it, of oregon trail deluxe, can you help me?
• How often should I feed my puppies?
• What can u use for personal femine hygene while pregnant?
• My hands get cold,fingers numb,and skin does not bounce back.what causes this?
• What does it mean if I dream about my crush?
• In the game Yu-Gi-Oh GX Tag Force 2 why do I get a penalty after each duel?
• Where can i play inuyasha games online?
• Who is Gaspard Ulliel currently dating???
• Anyone see Marion Gaborik fly?
• How much do used iPods go for?
• I think I'm ugly and not a good person?

Now I understand how Yahoo! Answers is the perfect reference tool. Ask it any question you want, and some guy might come and give an answer to you...

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

Actually, the vital font of knowledge is comic sans.

Indeed, the biggest problem with Yahoo Answers

Is that you can't flame moronic little fuckwits who ask shite questions or give shite answers. That's what made Usenet useful.

 

Wikipedia vs. Yahoo Answers - Deathmatch!

Yahoo! Answers in Wikipedia.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_answers [wikipedia.org] :

Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven knowledge market website launched by Yahoo! on December 13, 2005 that allows users to ask questions of other users and answer other users' questions. The site gives members the chance to earn points as a way to encourage participation and is based on Naver's Knowledge iN.

[ a few paragraphs later... ]

Criticism

The site has been criticized as being more about social networking than providing accurate information.[5]

References

5. ^ Leibenluft, Jacob (2007-12-07). A Librarian's Worst Nightmare: Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong.

Wikipedia in Yahoo! Answers

How do I make an entry on Wikipedia?

        * 3 hours ago
        * - 3 days left to answer.

Answers (0)

Be the first to answer this question.

Any questions?

Re:Comparing Apples and... What??

Exactly. You don't use Yahoo! Answers to learn basic facts, you use it for questions that are more suited for human answers. You ask "What hotel is near the good bars in Portland, Oregon?" not "What's the melting point of Sn?"

Re:Huh?

Man, I hear you. I read this book once, called "The Holy Bible" and I never found out ANYTHING about a bible, much less a holy one. Instead it was a bunch of stuff about this "THE LORD" guy and a bunch of people that followed him or didn't follow him, then some Roman thugs nail his son to a tree. After that it didn't really go anywhere (a couple other guys get nailed to trees, too, but it's kind of anticlimactic after the first one), but it had a pretty spectacular ending where THE LORD gets some payback that I imagine some special effects guys could go crazy with if they ever made it into a movie.

Overall, it was kind of disappointing, though. Never did find out about a bible and whoever wrote it really needed their editor to reel it in.

Re:Huh?

Banana shortage.

Rich

yahoo

Yahoo! Answers--the place to go to get your question answered by a certified yahoo.

So where is the problem?

If Yahoo answers doesn't let them cheat all that well, than why is there a problem? The student who did the proper research still gets a passing grade, and the student who tried to 'cheat' did suffers for it.

How is this any different than 20 years ago?

Re:So where is the problem?

The problem is not that Yahoo! Answers has false information.

The problem is that schools aren't teaching students how to evaluate sources. If they were, students would learn very quickly not to rely on Yahoo! Answers.

Is Yahoo Answers Reliable?

Why not just go to the source?

According to Yahoo Answers:

Resolved Question: Is Yahoo Answers reliable?

Best Answer: No way.

But then again it could be wrong. You can hardly trust something you read on that site.

Re:Is Yahoo Answers Reliable?

That's probably going to get deleted. In case you didn't notice from the Yahoo Answers ToS:

(4) You agree not to pose any Gödelian [wikipedia.org] self-referential questions ...

Why, they might as well use a moderated forum

where members can "score" the comments of others... Nah, it'd never work. Sure to collapse from its own inbred weight in MUCH LESS than a decade...

Approach

Ok, like many of you when I was in school researching something I'd wander over to the card catalogue and find several books from different authors / publishers, absorb the relevant data from them and draw conclusions on correlated data that was supported by most of my references. How did I know the data in those books was correct? Often, they cited the same piece of work or research (usually unavailable to my library), so in a lot of cases even though I had different perspectives on a given topic I couldn't be 100% sure that the information presented there was correct, all I really had with my bibliography was the unspoken assurance that several publishers and authors weren't trying to trick me into believing something.

Now-a-days Google is my card catalogue, Wikis and Answer sites are my reference material. I hold information I cull from the internet with the same amount of trust as the books I used to use. I'm not sure if I first heard it in high school or not but the same rule applies to both:

Check your references before you even begin to draw conclusions.

Re:Good Enough for College

Yes. Being wrong, but documenting it clearly so that someone who comes after you can discover that you're wrong, is far better than being right, but documenting it so vaguely that the people who come after you cannot recreate the original chain of reasoning that led you to your conclusions.

I really don't care if you're right or wrong in a paper. I care about whether you can prove that you're right or wrong. The two are completely different. If you're wrong but you supply me with your evidence, your chains of reasoning, your sources, then your paper is worth much, much more than someone who is right but cannot document a thing.

I'm a librarian, and my worst nightmare is:

Margaret Thatcher wearing nothing but a thin layer of whipped cream.

Now you tell me...

I looked up how to open a pomegranate on Yahoo! Answers and ended up giving my two-year-old a lobotomy. Great.

Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

Maybe if students are cheating off of Yahoo and Wikipedia, teachers aren't asking students challenging questions. In essence, they are asking 'fill in the blank', 'short answer', or 'multiple choice' questions that are easy to snag off an encyclopedic site. Instead of complaining about how such sites produce intellectual laggards, maybe we should think of how they can be used to enhance some complex thought process and their practical limitations. For instance, a teacher could ask a student to solve some physics question specialized for the class that involves more than one algorithm to solve. That would make it harder to google if the student doesn't understand the problem and know where to look. If they understand it, find a ready made solution, and apply it, then they should get some credit (more so if they cite their source). It's not enough that we want children with critical thinking skills. It's also important to have teachers with critical think skills as well. Otherwise, it's kind of moot when the students are more resourceful than the teacher.

Actual Yahoo! Questions

Here are some actual questions I've collected from Yahoo! Answers over time:

- What is the best way to hint to your parents that you are pregnant?
- How do my mum and dad want to renew my wedding vow?
- Do lesbian cheerleaders really exist?
- How powerful does a telescope have to be to see the moon?
- How can I master the art of Levitation?
- Swimming at the waterslides and have to pee really bad... What to do??
- My BODY is my own ENEMY? WHAT would you do if YOU were IN my POSITION?
- What kind of shampoo does Ozzy Osbourne use?
- My nipples are wierd???!!?
- Is it true if you put blood in someones food they will go crazy?
- How many years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds are in 200300 if you divide it by 360?
- Do female animals have G Spot?
- Unfortunately, I have very little common sense.
- Is there a way to make my nostrils bigger without surgery?
- Do mice really explode???
- Automatic toilets scare me. Am I alone?

Can I just point out

That the answers in Yahoo Answers were mostly created by hormonal twelve year olds and as such are complete utter bollocks.

Get this. The person choosing the "best" answer is the same person who doesn't have a fucking clue and had to ask the question in the first place. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea, but I think they should get a medal for "The most ironic contribution to world knowledge".
 

They need to do way instain mother

They need to do way instain mother> who kill thier babbys. becuse these babby cant frigth back?
it was on the news this mroing a mother in ar who had kill her three
kids. they are taking the three babby back to new york to lady to rest
my pary are with the father who lost his chrilden ; i am truley sorry for your lots

Anyone who reads somethingawful's weekend web should know how good Yahoo Answers is as a source of information... [somethingawful.com]

Best to learn by experience?

Let me play devil's advocate here:

Suppose you're a teacher or librarian....

• Don't explicitly ban the use of Yahoo Answers or Wikipedia, but do make sure to ruthlessly demand that sources are cited.
  
• When they do use Yahoo or Wikipedia, and come up with a blatantly incorrect bit, or don't cite any other sources whatsoever, come down hard, and fail their sorry asses on that paper.
  
• Student learns valuable lesson, and learns to be generally skeptical of whatever they read from *any* source. Wikipedia, Britannica, and The New York Times are all rife with errors. With any luck, this will be one of the few things said student will remember long after he's done with your class.
  
• If the student learns from his mistake, and you're a decent human being, offer to drop the bad grade at the end of the term. Learning from mistakes is an integral part of education, and if the student has demonstrated to indeed have learned the lesson, don't punish him for it!
  

The more skeptical the students are, and the more they learn to think on their own, the better --- a truly great teacher will also encourage students to be skeptical of his lectures.

I had a university professor who would intentionally make two subtle errors in derivations during Physics lectures that would cancel each other out, resulting in the correct solution at the end of the derivation.

He'd mention in the next lecture that there were two such "mistakes" in the previous day's lecture, and would then assign a problem set that explicitly depended upon those two mistakes not being there. At the time, we hated him for it, but it was an absolutely fantastic way of making us learn the material through and through, and taught us to think on our own, rather than rote transcription of whatever was written on the board.

CustomizeGoogle is your friend

I use the CustomizeGoogle [customizegoogle.com] Forefox plugin to filter out all about.com and answer.com results. Makes life just a little bit simper.

This article needs cleanup.

Take my word for it--no one is going to make any such claims about Yahoo! Answers any time soon.

[Citation needed]