Yahoo! Singapore Answers blog

You know, under the Yahoo! Answers Community Guidelines, we tell all users to “Share what you know”. So what do we mean by that?

Well, take myself for example. I must admit I’m not very knowledgeable about everything (if I am, then I can be the first human walking encyclopedia! But I’m not, sob.). However, I do watch quite a bit Japanese Anime, play RPGs (Role Playing Games) in my spare time and I love to do research online (yes, I’m a closet geek). So I do my part by helping to answer questions that ask about Anime and games, as well as factual questions where I can just do a quick research online before answering them.

Now I really like animals, dogs in particular, but I’m not an expert. So thank goodness there are other knowledgeable Answerers like and MrsCrabs sharing advice and their expertise on animals in the “Pets” category. It is because that I know there are all these dedicated Answerers on Yahoo! Answers sharing their knowledge that I’m confident in approaching Yahoo! Answers for help. Consequently, I also feel that it’s important that I share what I know because maybe there’s someone out there searching for answers to questions about Anime (yes, Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales is showing on Animax right now and while the drawing style is very archaic, the OP is funky and reminds me of Samurai Champloo’s OP ) and RPGs.

So while sharing is good, becareful not to violate the Community Guidelines by letting your personal agenda get in the way of the community spirit of sharing knowledge!

What are the similarities between Yahoo! Answers and your loved ones? No, your loved one is not a walking Q&A. No, you can’t hug Yahoo! Answers while you sleep. The similarity is…. we sometimes take both for granted! You know how sometimes when we take our loved ones for granted, we can be quite rude to them? Well, we can be rude because we know that deep inside, they love us, so they will forgive our rudeness. But of course there is a limit to how rude we can be before we actually hurt them. So similarly for Yahoo! Answers, we take each other for granted and will sometimes forget and reply questions with rude answers.

So here we go with Community Guidelines 101 – Be Courteous! “Courtesy helps foster a respectful and knowledgeable community, and that benefits everyone.” Don’t forget that Yahoo! Answers has a huge diverse community of people with different opinions, so it’s up to us to be polite and treat each other with respect. I’m not asking you to be a stuffy old shirt, but please refrain from insulting the other members and calling them or their replies to the same question “stupid” or worse. That’s not very pleasant nor mature. I’ve seen some of those instances in Answers and I shall not name any names, but do bear in mind that rude and offensive replies will be reported and deleted. Let’s just make Yahoo! Answers a pleasant place for all of us to share our knowledge, experiences and opinions by following the simple Community Guidelines.