Despite it's infamy, Yahoo Answers was the largest Q&A website for a long time and is a huge part of our digital heritage. Soon, it will be gone forever. The ArchiveTeam will be doing all they can back up as much as possible before it's too late, but IP address rate-limiting is a huge roadblock. If you want to help, download the ArchiveTeam Warrior and run it in the background. It doesn't use a ton of resources - they just need more IP addresses.
I'm willing to donate my IP address, but is this active or is it still being set up? I downloaded the Warrior but don't see Yahoo Answers as an available project.
The project is active as of 5 minutes ago, for anyone wishing to contribute.
The projection given on IRC was "There's no way we'll get them all" and "assuming 150 million items, we need to go ~5 times what we are now" so help is appreciated!
This reminds me of a couple of cute Yahoo! answers story.
In a past life I was misplaced by the high schools sorting-hat counselor into the house of civil engineering. I was motivated and so our Hydrology professor made me the TA for his Hydraulics class.
He would give me questions with no answers to go through in my sections. The questions were damn hard and I would sometimes ask them on Yahoo! answers and this particular guy from India would always come and answer them meticulously and write integrals using unholy script like: int(a,b)Sin x dx and such and I would happily decode them for half an hour before trying to understand the solution. Fun times.
A similar guy helped me a lot when I was learning C. Hey Manjunath! if you're reading this thanks I'm a software engineer now.
For read-heavy content sites like Yahoo Answers, I wonder why they get shut down instead of getting compiled into pregenerated static HTML and hosted as read-only.
My bet would be that no management at Yahoo wanted to own that. It'd just be a slow down-and-to-the-right graph over time. There'd be absolutely no upside to having your name attached to the project, and any engineer who volunteered who be stuck maintaining it forever with no hope of promotion.
Sure, it's probably millions of dollars per year that they're throwing out by not keeping it passively online, so it'd be in the company's interest, but with apologies to Mitt Romney, corporations aren't people. If something isn't advantageous to at least one individual decision maker, it won't happen.
This would still be an ongoing product that would need integration into the current ad networks; security reviews; patches to the servers; OS upgrades; legal support (copyright, abuse, and right-to-be-forgotten claims); accessibility support; and probably a few other things I can't think of. It could be done, maybe for a profit, but how big a profit? My guess is any potential advocate inside Yahoo! has bigger fish to fry.
I think Yahoo Answers was highly indexed by Google in like 2010.
But for years now, I've never seen a Yahoo Answers link in my search results. You have things like Reddit now highly indexed which has far less silly answers and questions through actually having moderation.
I doubt its getting much traffic, and if it is, it's probably providing a bad look to the brand.
A couple Yahoo product shutdowns supposedly happened because no one wanted to touch the code anymore. I’ve seen the same thing in much smaller product companies—the Elm app, the old Rails app after all the Ruby developers left, etc.
It remains a liability forever. You can never make it read-only because even 20 years from now someone will be sending your legal team take down requests because they don't agree with what 9 year old themselves wrote next to their real name...
Are there any real answers of value on there? I know there's plenty of hilarious questions like the classic "how is babby formed?" but I wouldn't ever consider Yahoo! Answers a legitimate source for anything.
Public libraries aren't a thing in many countries. The reason North America has a tradition of public libraries is that one of the richest men of the 20th century decided to leave behind a legacy of literacy [1]. Prior to that, quite a few protestant groups were big on literacy and invented the idea of public libraries for all.
I have friends from other countries who have told me that libraries in their home countries are indeed commercial, you pay a small fee to rent a book for a fixed period of time. Stories from childhood, so I am not sure if such libraries are still common place in those countries, but the question is most certainly not stupid.
Though I'm not a user and never liked the service myself, I'd like it to be preserved. It is part of internet history. Let's not let happen to answers what happened to geocities.
First they came for GeoCities, and I didn't say anything because I don't use GeoCities.
Then they came for AIM, and I didn't say anything because I don't use AIM.
Then they came for Yahoo Answers, and I didn't say anything because I don't use Yahoo Answers.
Then they came for an app I cared about, and there was nobody left to say anything.
Why is Yahoo even still around? They got rid of search. They got rid of the directory. They sold Alibaba. What are they still doing, if anything?
Verizon may be getting out of content. With antitrust regulation picking up, it's quite likely that telcos will be required to get out of the content business. Historically, the US made movie companies stop owning movie theaters, and car companies stop owning dealers. Although Yahoo is now such a loser that it's hard to make an antitrust case against Verizon owning them. AT&T and DirectTV, though...
Yahoo gets rid of some of their best services. Yahoo Geolocation Service, besides Google which was license restricted, was the most accurate service for putting in an address and getting latitude/longitude coordinates. But they sadly shut it down.
I sure hope they don't shut down Yahoo Finance. It's the best thing that Yahoo currently has.
The mismanagement of yahoo/oath/Verizon assets has been stunning. What a waste. Marissa Meyer started it. Her exit and the Verizon acquisition accelerated it. Now they are a husk of early web properties when they could have been an Amazon with the right leadership.
My main experience with Yahoo! Answers is that it's more of a trolling platform than anything else. The questions are trolls, and the answers are trolls.
Nevertheless, I'm going to miss it. The trolling was fun to read, at least.
Finally! Although search engines have finally deranked Yahoo Answers, I still resent it for all the years when I would look up something and the top results always included a Yahoo Answer written by a 12 year old. It's pretty much a warehouse of misinformation to such a degree that it makes Quora look like Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of credibility.
When multiple parrot the same 'how is babby formed' meme it makes me think the forum has been invaded by bird people simply echoing the songs they know. Maybe birds and humans aren't so different after all. Squawk?
I was scared that the Japanese version, Yahoo Chiebukuro would shut down also, but at least at the moment it seems to be only the English version that's shutting down.
Yahoo Chiebukuro is an indispensable resource for me every time I want to ask stupid questions or see candid answers about Japanese culture / way of thinking.
I still remember all the Techcrunch posts in 2006 when it became clear that Yahoo Answers was beating Google Answers [0]. Back then, Google was killing Yahoo in the same way that Amazon is killing Walmart today - very publicly and brutally, despite Walmart (and back then Yahoo) putting on a brave face and telling everyone that it can avoid the inevitable. So when Yahoo scored a tiny little victory, they celebrated it like it was the beginning of a new era. I imagine that Walmart would do the same today if the public gave them credit for building a better automated CX bot or scoring some other interesting but immaterial win.
I do think it's interesting that we call the Web the "repository of human knowledge" when clearly everything is temporary, and you'd do better to buy a book on most subjects.
(Not that I am complaining about it, I just think we should disabuse ourselves of this notion.)
[+] [-] surround|5 years ago|reply
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior
[+] [-] judge2020|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cormorant|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moonbug|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|4 years ago|reply
The projection given on IRC was "There's no way we'll get them all" and "assuming 150 million items, we need to go ~5 times what we are now" so help is appreciated!
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tijuco2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkloop|5 years ago|reply
Aren't you also providing 100% of the resources if they are using your IP, or is there a way for them to do most of the work "behind" your IP?
[+] [-] agumonkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelApproved|5 years ago|reply
Does anyone happen to know what safeguards exist to protect against random child porn or other illegal content from flowing through my connection?
I checked the site but didn’t see anything address this concern.
My fear is the archive grabs a page that happens to have nefarious content which I’d be legally on the hook for.
Am I being overly cautious or is there a genuine risk?
[+] [-] maininformer|5 years ago|reply
In a past life I was misplaced by the high schools sorting-hat counselor into the house of civil engineering. I was motivated and so our Hydrology professor made me the TA for his Hydraulics class.
He would give me questions with no answers to go through in my sections. The questions were damn hard and I would sometimes ask them on Yahoo! answers and this particular guy from India would always come and answer them meticulously and write integrals using unholy script like: int(a,b)Sin x dx and such and I would happily decode them for half an hour before trying to understand the solution. Fun times.
A similar guy helped me a lot when I was learning C. Hey Manjunath! if you're reading this thanks I'm a software engineer now.
[+] [-] GormanFletcher|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CobrastanJorji|5 years ago|reply
Sure, it's probably millions of dollars per year that they're throwing out by not keeping it passively online, so it'd be in the company's interest, but with apologies to Mitt Romney, corporations aren't people. If something isn't advantageous to at least one individual decision maker, it won't happen.
[+] [-] ericbarrett|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatyesaid|5 years ago|reply
But for years now, I've never seen a Yahoo Answers link in my search results. You have things like Reddit now highly indexed which has far less silly answers and questions through actually having moderation.
I doubt its getting much traffic, and if it is, it's probably providing a bad look to the brand.
[+] [-] WalterBright|5 years ago|reply
https://digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/index.html
It's got 20 years of content. No Javascript, just plain html.
It came in really handy when I wrote the history of the D programming language paper.
[+] [-] 1123581321|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkr-hn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone1234|5 years ago|reply
I agree: Strange choice. But as is the world of large corporations and decision-making.
[+] [-] blackearl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slugiscool99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottmcleod|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peter303|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisneigh|5 years ago|reply
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090226170437A...
[+] [-] com2kid|5 years ago|reply
I have friends from other countries who have told me that libraries in their home countries are indeed commercial, you pay a small fee to rent a book for a fixed period of time. Stories from childhood, so I am not sure if such libraries are still common place in those countries, but the question is most certainly not stupid.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_Amer...
[+] [-] blackearl|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShUeudtaFg
[+] [-] brassattax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MiddleEndian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unnouinceput|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aerosmile|5 years ago|reply
https://answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=sjRwIxRCaa
[+] [-] marcodiego|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] windowshopping|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
Verizon may be getting out of content. With antitrust regulation picking up, it's quite likely that telcos will be required to get out of the content business. Historically, the US made movie companies stop owning movie theaters, and car companies stop owning dealers. Although Yahoo is now such a loser that it's hard to make an antitrust case against Verizon owning them. AT&T and DirectTV, though...
[+] [-] didip|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdlyga|5 years ago|reply
I sure hope they don't shut down Yahoo Finance. It's the best thing that Yahoo currently has.
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amyjess|5 years ago|reply
Nevertheless, I'm going to miss it. The trolling was fun to read, at least.
[+] [-] ravenstine|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] terse_malvolio|5 years ago|reply
Curious what answers HN found interesting? Algolia Search: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fanswers.yahoo.com%2F
[+] [-] mitjak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justplay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|5 years ago|reply
My proving ground was the religious answers group, where I went head to head with the dominant anti-faith trolls.
[+] [-] GolDDranks|5 years ago|reply
Yahoo Chiebukuro is an indispensable resource for me every time I want to ask stupid questions or see candid answers about Japanese culture / way of thinking.
[+] [-] aerosmile|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2006/11/30/yahoos-big-win/
[+] [-] TameAntelope|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] softwaredoug|5 years ago|reply
(Not that I am complaining about it, I just think we should disabuse ourselves of this notion.)
[+] [-] teekert|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201210302242...