This will keep you up at night! (uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/)

Member Name: I-tried-this

Product:	uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/
Date:	26/07/08 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Get a second opinion, and a third, and a forth.....

Disadvantages: people who mess up the group for everyone, named as "trolls" by the frequent users of the site.

I started using yahoo answers some time ago when I saw an advert in the Metro (free paper for morning public transport users). It was advertised as a site where you could ask anything and get the answer straight away, stuff you were maybe to embarrassed to ask, stuff you just were always wondering, homework or study tips.

Not being in need of any of these, I took a look. I love knowing random pieces of information- I think this is a common desire as there are books written on the subject (Scott's is just one).

On locating the page, I was asked to give my yahoo account number- which luckily I had arranged for freecycle purposes already- this could be an added thing you need to do if you want to join.

Its easy to join, there are on screen instructions and your told you have 100 points to start with, by answering questions of others, you get 2 points, and there are levels from one to seven, the more you ask, the higher your points go, there are also rules about being nice to others and things that are not OK to ask/promote on the site (e.g. illegal downloading...advertising...child pornography...in not so many works.). You get 1 point for visiting each day you visit.

I set about asking questions. I asked about 5 before seeing my points go down, hmmmm. I then read the instructions,- its easy to ignore them and just tick the 'yes' box when you first join. Its there stated that you loose 5 points for asking a question. This straight away put me on track, right, I will never ask a question. I want to get to the next level....

So here I am nearly at level 7, (I have 21254 points) it takes a long time and a lot of answering questions, you can try to get away with not asking any but every so often you get the urge, or you get a reminder when you go to ask a question and the page asks you to answer a question... irritating. Its easy to just override this by refreshing the page.

The sort of people who are on the site really matters, its them who answer your question. At different times of day different people will answer, and sometimes, people from other countries will be on the site, every country has their own so languages are not an issue here, but you can go look on the answers pages for the other countries and see what's going on, they can do the same with us.

At different times of the day, you get different communities, homework questions (kids blatantly trying to get others to do their homework with irresistible algebraic formulas or quotations from study books... its hard sometimes not to, despite my belief they should speak to a teacher if they don't understand, not just get the answer from someone else.
At 4am its great, its still up and running, fantastic for those of us who are insomniacs, some questions are from overseas, Australia, China, USA, many are from the UK, even people down the road from you, you never met, until now!

Questions vary too, the more thinking types or generally the more variety happens between 9-5 when people are at work and bored, (I wish I had a paying job that I could have the time to sit down and do things like that!) the drunken ones at 2am, the moral ones at the weekend or at 3am... its kind of clichés, you get a good view point of what's going on in the world from just reading the questions on here. There are always exceptions to the rule, some homework questions roll in at 12am, but generally you get what I mean!

There are a few idiots on here, people who report others and get some of your points swiped out of spite, boredom...etc. and the yahoo answers team who run the site don't help as they don't reply for weeks, so if you spot what's been named a "troll" keep clear, they mess things up. Report them and they get banned. Eventually.

Its not so easy to ask personal questions, particularly if you build up friends (called "contacts") who can get reminded when you ask a question, so the very personal ones can feel still too personal, but they do get asked by some people, just rarely. But if you ask your question at the right time of day (market your question!!) you do get a decent answer most of the time, if not a timid reply from someone wanting their 2 points saying something along the lines of "sorry, I don't know, hope you find your answer". Don't do this yourself or you will get reported for not answering the question, you loose points when you get reported.

I would recommend this site to anyone light hearted or an insomniac, -but beware, it can be addictive and although you will have something to do at 4am, you wont get the chance to even try to sleep!
Don't take too many of the answers seriously, some are right, but its not the place to get a diagnosis for a mole on your skin or anything!

Summary: A random and intereting thing to do in your spare time, you may even learn something!