Yahoo Answers is shutting down after 16 years

[midian182]

In brief: Q: When is Yahoo Answers, the internet’s longest-running Q&A platform, shutting down forever? A: May 4. The service has announced that questions can be submitted until April 20, but the site will be erased from existence, along with all its archives, two weeks later.

As reported by The Verge. Yahoo Answers has been around since 2005, answering some of life’s most confusing conundrums, such as, “Do they have toilet paper in Canada?”, “Can I tell by the smell of my husband’s gas if he’s been cheating?” and “How do I take care of my pet potato?”

Users will have until June 30 to download their Yahoo Answers content—if they want to—including their Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images. Other users’ content, questions, and answers won’t be downloadable.

A typical Yahoo Answers question.

Yahoo became part of Verizon Media Group following a $4.48 billion acquisition in 2017. Yahoo says the Q&A site is shuttering because “it has become less popular over the years,” and the company has “decided to shift our resources away” from Yahoo Answers to “focus on products that better serve our members.” The site attracts around 60 million visitors per month, far fewer than Quora’s 504 million visitors and Reddit’s 52 million daily users.

A lot of the current questions on the site ask who’s to blame for the service going away. Answers include Yahoo itself, the lack of money for moderation, and trolls. The potential reform of Section 230, which prevents online platforms from being legally liable for user content, may also have played a part.

Image credit: Postmodern Studio

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https://www.techspot.com/news/89193-yahoo-answers-shutting-down-after-16-years.html

 

[McKocoa]

Poor Yahoo was never able to grow out of the 1990's. They need to shut that whole operation down. People only use it for their junk mail. (full disclosure, I was banned from yahoo answers for repeatedly asking questions about figgy pudding)

 

[Neatfeatguy]

What the heck is Yahoo Answers?

Yahoo was the thing years ago. I never heard of Yahoo Answers. Then again, Yahoo has become a trash site for finding news information since they Disnified their news stories and turned off reader comments about a year or so back.

Most of the time commenters weren't abrasive towards each other, they were busy blasting how piss poor Yahoo wrote stories and allowed misleading news stories to be posted. Many posters would post proper links to follow up poor reporting by Yahoo so readers could actually get the whole story and not just Yahoo's propaganda crap they posted. But, Yahoo said they wanted people to feel "safe" and not be attacked......right. Yahoo got tired of being blasted by their poor reporting that they had to stop people from commenting and posting correct news feed links to the crap Yahoo was shoving down people's throats.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

It was a waste of time.

Full of trolls.

Just like their regular comment section on regular news.

 

[kimo1]

Poor Yahoo was never able to grow out of the 1990's. They need to shut that whole operation down. People only use it for their junk mail. (full disclosure, I was banned from yahoo answers for repeatedly asking questions about figgy pudding)

I got all of my yahoo accounts deleted overnight for trying to use Y!A the fair way.
Should have made hundreds of fake accounts to give myself points just like everybody is doing there.

Answerbag was next interesting place to question and answer. Had some pretty smart people there. But it quickly went downhill after owners liked to see more spam and mentally challenged people using the service.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Hopefully someone with the resources will back up all the archives for future enjoyment.

 

[arrowflash]

Yahoo! Answers wanted to be Quora but it never worked out because of all the trolls using the site. However Yahoo! Answers between 2006 - 2014 was a pretty fun source of entertainment and because of that it's a shame to see it go away. But understandable since it has become a zombie for quite some time and probably only causing extra expenses to the company.

 

[defaultluser]

Yahoo! Answers wanted to be Quora but it never worked out because of all the trolls using the site. However Yahoo! Answers between 2006 - 2014 was a pretty fun source of entertainment and because of that it's a shame to see it go away. But understandable since it has become a zombie for quite some time and probably only causing extra expenses to the company.

Yeah, it hasn't been relevant since "How is Babby Formed," and that was over a decade ago!

 

[toooooot]

What the heck is Yahoo Answers?

Yahoo was the thing years ago. I never heard of Yahoo Answers. Then again, Yahoo has become a trash site for finding news information since they Disnified their news stories and turned off reader comments about a year or so back.

Most of the time commenters weren't abrasive towards each other, they were busy blasting how piss poor Yahoo wrote stories and allowed misleading news stories to be posted. Many posters would post proper links to follow up poor reporting by Yahoo so readers could actually get the whole story and not just Yahoo's propaganda crap they posted. But, Yahoo said they wanted people to feel "safe" and not be attacked......right. Yahoo got tired of being blasted by their poor reporting that they had to stop people from commenting and posting correct news feed links to the crap Yahoo was shoving down people's throats.

I feel deep satisfuction seeing companeis that pull crap like that slowly die.

 

[Avro Arrow]

"How will we know if they have toilet paper in Canada?"

We have 270,000,000 hectares of Boreal Forest in Canada. We will literally be the last country on Earth to run out of toilet paper. The real question should be:

"How will we know if they have toilet paper in the USA?"

Don't expect Quora to help you on that either. I used to do a lot of answering of questions on Quora but I stopped immediately when I discovered that they have no problem accepting barefaced lies in categories that are factual, not opinion-based. In fact, you can't even report answers that are patently false. Quora has gone to hell just like Yahoo Answers did.