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."

Comments

No

[gustgr]

This is a librarian's worst nightmare.

Re:No

[jacquesm]

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

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet can be divided into two parts: those that find xkcd funny (vanishingly small) and those that don't (unfathomably large).

Re:No

[ericspinder]

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

[elyk]

Actually, I'd divide them all into the 10 basic types of people (correlation with those who understand binary and those who don't is unknown)

Re:No

[Cervantes]

the internet population can be divided into two parts, those that use yahoo and those that don't. I remember when we used to say that about AOL...

Re:No

[thejeffer]

I'm ambivalent.

Re:No

[Toonol]

While nearly everything Yahoo does ends up... well, just wrong... I think their email service is pretty good. I've got my work, my ISP, gmail, and yahoo addresses, and I end up using the yahoo email address for most stuff.

Re:No

[arth1]

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).

Re:No

[masterzora]

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

Re:No

[me at werk]

Then we'd miss out on a valuable source of entertainment. By the way, just How is babby formed?

Re:No

[dyefade]

Maybe you don't class them as Yahoo (after all, they were bought rather than created in house), but both flickr and del.icio.us are superb.

Re:No

[ehrichweiss]

"If Yahoo! wants to gain credibility for their QA section, they need to introduce paid overseers that cross-check answers"

That's absolutely the truth. A while back I happened to be searching for the answer to a riddle that was circulating about what turns a polar bear's fur white, makes men cry, and several other things...all of it written almost like a poem. The problem was the the answer was written as a poem and despite the fact that it was obvious that someone not only thought about the answer but wrote it down as a poem in response to the same rhythm of the riddle, everyone instead focused on a technicality in the riddle "Can you guess the riddle?" instead of "can you guess the answer?" and so the answer accepted by yahoo and all the idiots there was "No"..despite the fact that it could also be answered "Yes"(because it *also* doesn't ask if you can correctly guess if you play on their technicality).

THIS is why I use Google as my search engine and not Yahoo.

Re:No

[ehrichweiss]

I forgot to mention, that the answer is obviously neither "yes" or "no", and that, as we could easily guess, people in general are stupid and thought that there was no solution to the riddle because *they* couldn't think of the answer.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautiful response! Mod parent +5 Getoffmylaw! (and insightful for good measure)

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

what is argumentum ad populum? i'm gonna have to ask Yahoo Answers!

Re:No

[arth1]

There's a reason /. doesn't have cutesy avatars.

Except for Natalie Portman, you mean?

Oh, and one particular day when /. was... special, in a special special kind of way. I'll never forget the peculiar feeling of my eyes melting that fine morning; after eating my usual two spoonfuls of coffee crystals washed down with hot tap water, and rubbing away some of the rheum from my eyes, I sat down in front of the PC to read some acerbic commentaries on life, the universe and why it sucks. In other words, I opened my slashdot bookmark, completely unprepared for the OMG Ponies issue.

Re:No

[LilGuy]

Do Liberians really like books or something?

Re:No

[CCFreak2K]

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.

Unfortunately, without the proper checks and balances (or at least checks), this will suffer from the same problems that Wikipedia does: bias. If I happen to think apples are better than oranges, I might mark answers to questions about oranges down because they aren't critical of oranges..

Re:No

[evanbd]

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.

Re:No

[McFadden]

The other day I was searching google for information about the Vista MUI (multilingual user interface) which allows Vista Premium and Enterprise to support several languages in a single install (i.e. you can switch the interface between them). And yes, before you start some of us are in positions where we have to work with Vista in one form or another, so don't even go there.

One of the pages that popped up was on Yahoo Answers. It was from someone asking if Vista supported multiple languages. The answer (chosen by the asker as the 'best' response, I might add) was along the lines of "no, it's impossible. You have to buy a separate copy of Vista for each language you want". I think that just about summed up the service for me.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant. Laughed so hard the office quiet girl had to come over and find out what was going on.

"...and?"

Hm. Looks like she's a second-grouper.

Re:No

[mwlewis]

No more than Sierra Leoneans, I'd expect.

Re:No

[Hognoxious]

There are two types of people, those who understand what the September that never ended means, and those who get modpoints.

Re:No

[Blyx]

Internet can be divided into two parts: people who think that internet can be divided into two parts and those who don't.

Re:No

[DragonWriter]

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.

No, before AOL, everyone in internet discussion forums (mostly, Usenet newsgroups) complained about, e.g., all the problems caused by FIDOnetters instead of AOLers, and talking, in much the same way you talk about the time before AOL/MSN, about the time before FIDOnet

Re:No

[DragonWriter]

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

No, Internetia est omnis divisa in partes tres....

Get your answers here!

[morgan_greywolf]

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!

[rwven]

I'm still wondering why this is a Libertarians worst nightmare. Maybe my local librarian has some books on phonics I can borrow...

Re:Get your answers here!

[trolltalk.com]

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!

[tjstork]

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

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.

Re:Get your answers here!

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah, but you have to admit, the urban legend is a hell of a lot funnier than the truth. (Okay, okay, so I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old. This is Slashdot after all ;))

FWIW, at least Wikipedia gets it right. Does that make Wikipedia better than the Brittanica of the 1970s?

Re:Get your answers here!

[morgan_greywolf]

It's a choppy sentence that implies the tail end of an enumeration where none exists. It is the tail end of an enumeration. Read that section over again -- it contains many explanations of the origin of the word crapper (meaning toilet).

Sure, it seems a bit awkwardly written, but I'll take accurate over nicely polished crap any day of the week.

Re:Get your answers here!

[trolltalk.com]

Of course the urban legend is funnier! What's sad, though, is that Britannica is somehow held up as some sort of "gold standard" in terms of accuracy, when, historically, they've always trailed due to their model - dead trees take time to be updated, and you have to pay someone to rewrite the article, so not every article is rewritten in a timely manner.

Case in point - one of my friends picked up a really old set (pre-WW2, iirc) of Britannica, and he found a really off-the-wall article on the different "races" of humans, and how "the black race" was "intellectually inferior". How many school kids were exposed to that crap in their school or public libraries?

Add to that more crap on phrenology, etc.

Wikipedia isn't perfect, and it will eventually be replaced with something better if it doesn't evolve, unlike Britannica, which is unable to reinvent itself.

Re:Get your answers here!

[spasm]

So fix it. That's what the edit link is there for : )

Why does it need to be?

[AuMatar]

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?

[QMalcolm]

This is true mostly. For instance if I was trying to find a DVD of the Athens 2004 Olympics opening ceremonies, or something rare or obscure or whatever, I'd just pop it on some guy on Yahoo Answers to dig through ebay or craigslist to find it for me. If I want to know about Greek mythology I'd obviously choose the Wikipedia page over whatever Yahoo has to offer.

Re:Why does it need to be?

[eln]

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

Re:Why does it need to be?

[Spy der Mann]

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

Ah, so that's the reason why questions get answered 3 months later!

Re:Why does it need to be?

[godawsgo]

Internet memes... I've found suitable answers at the Yahoo site without having to troll around to find out about some fast food mishap that involved a prophylactic, and a pending lawsuit...

of course.. I.. uhh.. justed wanted to chat with the cool people at the water cooler...

That said.. I think there is some value for aggregating useless knowledge that has no journalistic value nor encyclopedic value... Ugh.. Why do I want to know those things again?

-- Go, Daws. Go!

Re:Why does it need to be?

[Jugalator]

Their purpose is to be small, simple aid if you have nowhere better to look. Yahoo Answers is hardly even that. If you've used it for a total of an hour, you'll probably see it's more like a community site for people interested in discussing various topics. A lot of questions there are rhetorical and can't even be answered... Others are asked not because the one asking wants an actual answer, yet others seem to do it as some weird way of trolling. And that's just about the people asking questions. Those answering them are often even worse.

Things like "Why is the sky blue?" Answers are like: "Because of reflections from the water" :-S

People often don't even know, or care to tell they don't know, they just guess and pretend like they do... Err... Why? They won't even win prizes, just fictional "points".

It's among the lamest forms of lameness I can imagine wasting time on. At least if I waste time here on Slashdot on discussing topics, I may feel I'm actually helping someone.

Re:Why does it need to be?

[Isotopian]

Well for memes, where better to look than The Encyclopedia Dramatica!
Sure, it's maybe a little difficult to read through a site that attacks everything, but, at least they have them there.

Re:Why does it need to be?

[doublem]

You might want to read the site:

http://yahooanswerssucks.blogspot.com/

It's one person's attempt to explore the stupidity that is Yahoo Answers. The truth is intelligent, well researched answers get you banned, while mindless drivel gets you a "Best Answer" rating real quick.

What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

[Malevolent Tester]

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

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

[idiotwithastick]

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?

[Frizzle Fry]

Actually, the vital font of knowledge is comic sans.

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

[tehBoris]

You silly Fizzle Fry, Comic Sans is the vital type face of knowledge!

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

[Taleron]

Damn I wish I hadn't just used the last of my mod points.

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a gay dead gerbil fucking terrorist Jew, I find those pages to be immensely helpful.

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

[humina]

I like the attempt to answer a real question though:

Who is Fidel Castro?

Best Answer:
Before returning to Cuba to lead the Communist Revolution he was a pitcher for the New York Yankees.

Re:What's wrong with Yahoo Answers?

[xPsi]

Ouch. And those were the ones categorized as "resolved answers."

Comparing Apples and... What??

[goldspider]

I didn't RTFA, but are they really implying there's some kind of relevant comparison between Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers???

Re:Comparing Apples and... What??

[mustpax]

To quote Maeby from Arrested Development: "that's like comparing apples and a fruit no one's ever heard of."

Re:Comparing Apples and... What??

[owlnation]

I didn't RTFA, but are they really implying there's some kind of relevant comparison between Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers???

Wikipedia is on another fundraising drive. This certainly is NOT news, so it's most likely a just shill to promote wikipedia.

Re:Comparing Apples and... What??

[Choad Namath]

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?"

A Librarian's REAL worst nightmare...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bears. Lots and lots of bears.

Re:A Librarian's REAL worst nightmare...

[gardyloo]

Yeah, those fuckers really break the spines on paperbacks, too.

Re:A Librarian's REAL worst nightmare...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bears. Lots and lots of bears. WTF are you talking about? Stephen Colbert is not a librarian!!!

Huh?

[imstanny]

What do Librarians have to do with this pointless rant?

I would argue that a Librarian's worst nightmare is a book worm.

Re:Huh?

[TubeSteak]

Nothing apparently...
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2179393
TFA doesn't even use the word librarian once.
Just trolling for page hits I assume.

Re:Huh?

[jacquesm]

a real life librarians worst nightmare is a fire.

Re:Huh?

[Otter]

TFA doesn't even use the word librarian once.

Huh? Take another look at your own link!

Re:Huh?

[merreborn]

It's only used in the title. The actual text of the article doesn't contain the word

Re:Huh?

[Spy der Mann]

a real life librarians worst nightmare is a fire.

Specifically, a fire in the Central Library caused by some guy with a scar on his face - followed by the State Alchemists telling you to scribe all the books you read because you happen to have photographic memory. Now THAT's a librarian's worst nightmare ;-)

Re:Huh?

[Lijemo]

No, it's a Patriot Act subpoena complete with gag order.

Re:Huh?

[rk]

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?

[uniquename72]

I am a librarian, and my worst nightmare is the same as everyone else's: going to the circus and getting fisted by midgets in the back of the clown car.

The multitude of sites that offer 'answers' for a fee is a non-issue.

Re:Huh?

[Gulthek]

Never visited a reference desk in your life eh?

Free research help and answers to almost any question from a reliable (e.g. quotable source), FTW!

Re:Huh?

[H0D_G]

you, sir, are a wit. nicely said!

Re:Huh?

[Rhaban]

What do Librarians have to do with this pointless rant?

I would argue that a Librarian's worst nightmare is a book worm.

Interesting question, you should ask it on Yahoo! Answers.

Re:Huh?

[Richy_T]

Banana shortage.

Rich

Re:Huh?

[jacquesm]

hehe, that had me puzzled for about 10 seconds :)

Re:Huh?

[imstanny]

Man, I hear you. I read this book once, called "The Holy Bible" and I never found out ANYTHING about a bible

You're right. How foolish of me to read the title "Librarian's Worst Nightmare" and then actually expect that nightmare to be explained. Go read a book on the Darwin Awards... next to mod points it's the only other 'award' you'd qualify for.

Yahoo answers

[technoextreme]

The only question I remember answering was whether or not someone should change his name to Stephen Colbert...

yahoo

[gEvil (beta)]

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

Re:yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha.

so what?

[circletimessquare]

we don't want to regulate videogames, slashdot agrees: this is a nanny state

we don't want to regulate online dating, slashdot agrees: this is a nanny state

likewise:
we don't want regulate wikipedia or yahoo answers: THIS IS A NANNY STATE

people ask random friends advise all the time. lots of it is pointless or toxic or ignorant. people need to use their minds to filter the good from the bad. we need to learn to trust people to make decisions themselves

end of non-story

Re:so what?

[s4m7]

slashdot agrees: There you have it, the wisdom of the hive-mind decrees: do not question the wisdom of the hive-mind.

Re:so what?

[eln]

I think a good portion of Slashdot would object to the term "nanny state" used in just about any context as unnecessarily provocative, and I seriously doubt that all of Slashdot agrees with you on all of those points.

The only thing all of Slashdot can really agree on is that this^Wnext year is the Year of Linux on the Desktop. Anything else is just going to start an argument.

Re:so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am advising you that advise is a verb. A bit of advice: advice is a noun.

So where is the problem?

[Vampyre_Dark]

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?

[pimpimpim]

I agree with this! I was a tutor several years ago and had to check lab reports. The experiments they did have been done for the last 20 years and copies are widely available. It's still difficult to see who copied (although that university uses an electronic plagiarism database for almost everything by now, that compares with locally known work but also the internet), especially if it could have been two groups working together. Should I actually mind if two groups work together if it leads to a nice job?

What was easy to see, however, were people who just had it plain wrong. And there were several cases where two identical, crappy, reports were given to me. These people ended up having to do a lot of more work in the end! Idiots! The process of learning itself is actually copying stuff from others, but in the process getting to understand the difference between good stuff and bad stuff by comparing to what you already know and makes sense. If you are too lazy to do the last part, you won't come far even if you copy from the most reliable resource.

Many scientists use wikipedia for example, there are derivations of exotic formulae out there you will hardly find anywhere else. But they will make pretty sure the statements there are double-checked (working the calculations you find out by yourself is the best way here).

Re:So where is the problem?

[ResidntGeek]

If Yahoo answers doesn't let them cheat all that well, than why is there a problem?

Because the students are learning things which are incorrect. They're going through life not only ignorant, but actually misinformed.

The student who did the proper research still gets a passing grade, and the student who tried to 'cheat' did suffers for it.

This will sound like heresy to many, but there *are* things in life which matter more than grades. Things like level of knowledge and understanding, which aren't really reflected by grades.

Re:So where is the problem?

[DragonWriter]

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.

Re:So where is the problem?

[ResidntGeek]

And if the schools were teaching students the dangers of alcohol, they would learn very quickly not to drink, right?

Re:So where is the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The problem is that schools aren't teaching students how to evaluate sources.

Yes, of course it is the school's fault. It always is, isn't it? The fact that
the pupil gets a FAIL on his homework is too subtle a lesson. The school should
appoint a guardian to stand over the child's shoulder and talk him through every
little aspect of life. ``No, that's not the way to brush your teeth!'' ``That's
not the correct proton count for Carbon!''

Do parents not factor into your little world view? Or are they absolved of all
responsibility in your ideal world where all responsibility is borne by teachers?

Is Yahoo Answers Reliable?

[mbulge]

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?

[UbuntuDupe]

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 self-referential questions ...

Re:Is Yahoo Answers Reliable?

[the-ambiguity]

You can view this for yourself here. There are 172 answers to the question Is Yahoo Answers reliable?

Re:Is Yahoo Answers Reliable?

[Chris Mattern]

To which the typical Yahoo reader would probably reply: "Gödel? He was that dude on Hollywood Squares, right? I'll take George Gödel for the win!"

Chris Mattern

Reference what?

[s4m7]

I never got from the article (which for some inexplicable reason is linked to page 2, once again nice job editors.) what it has to do with reference librarians. TFA makes a good point that wikipedia has a definite leg up on yahoo answers in terms of accuracy. It also makes it pretty clear that isn't saying much. But do people really expect accuracy from a social-ask-and-answer site? IF some kid were to use this page as a reference and somehow cite it properly, I think it could lead to a good lesson for the student on how to judge the credibility of a web page. Assuming the underpaid, overworked public school teacher bothered to take such an opportunity.

fwiw yahoo answers isn't bad for opinion type questions like "what should i serve with my pot roast this holiday dinner" or something like that. it's not exactly a source of real expertise on anything of a factual nature, and anyone who treats it as such will get what they deserve.

Re:Reference what?

[i_b_don]

LOL... that's funny. I've read through half the articles and they've mentioned wikipedia a bunch of times, but I never thought anyone was actually comparing Yahoo answers to wikipedia. One is written by your average joe, the other is written by self-proclaimed experts. The difference is night and day. I go to wikipedia for answers, I go to yahoo answers for entertainment. (and not very good entertainment at that)

If you really want to see something scary, go look up some medical question in Yahoo answers. Wow. Some of the answers are seriously scary. Getting medical advice from non-scientific, homeopathic, anti vaccine, herbal nuts jobs... now that's some scary shit.

don

Re:Reference what?

[Attila Dimedici]

Assuming the underpaid, overworked public school teacher bothered to take such an opportunity. I know this is off topic, but you do realize that the teachers at the majority of private schools are paid significantly less than similarly qualified public school teachers, don't you?

Re:Reference what?

[s4m7]

Actually, I wasn't aware that similarly qualified teachers worked in private schools since many do not use accredited teachers and some don't require a college degree at all.

Nevertheless, your statement, true or not, does not dispute mine... that public school teachers are underpaid.

Re:Reference what?

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, I wasn't aware that similarly qualified teachers worked in private schools since many do not use accredited teachers and some don't require a college degree at all.

Nevertheless, your statement, true or not, does not dispute mine... that public school teachers are underpaid.

Where do you live that accredited private schools have teachers without college degrees? If the school is not accredited by the state, the children attending are considered to be truants.
More importantly, you are aware that the average starting salary for teachers in the US was in 2002-2003 was $29,564. Which when pro-rated to a whole year is $39,418. That's a pretty nice salary for a BS degree right out of college, considering that the median income of everybody in the US in 2003 was $45,016. What I can't tell is if that median starting salary for teachers includes private school teachers or not. I would say that, at least starting out, salaries for public school teachers are about right.

Why, they might as well use a moderated forum

[justsomecomputerguy]

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

[decipher_saint]

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:Approach

[tilandal]

That is of course total bull. For a book to show up at your library several things had to occur. #1) The author must have taken the time (ie money) to write the book. #2) The editor must have gone through the book. #3) A publisher must have thought that the book had enough merit to print. #4) A librarian must have thought that the book had enough merit to buy. By the time the book got into your hands it has been vetted at least 3 times. Maybe it has not been throughly researched but you can be assured that at least someone thinks that the book is worthwhile. A book in your local library has just a smidge more credibility then a random guy on a message board.

Re:Approach

[jesdynf]

Of Pandas And People can be found in school libraries too, you know.

Re:Approach

[Donniedarkness]

And TONS of people review wikipedia.

Now, I know that not everyone who goes through and edits the stuff on wikipedia is an expert on the subject, but oftentimes librarians aren't, either.

Re:Approach

[vimh42]

If I recall correctly, factual information had little to do with writing a research paper in highschool. What was important was writing a paper in the format requested, citing correctly and turning the paper in on time. Oh sure, I had a few teachers that might have checked my sources, but that was just to see if I used a variety of sources and not just one and made up extra citations to fill that requirement.

I suppose all those papers taught me was that the truth is irrelevant. It's all about presentation. I should have gone into politics.

Re:Approach

[Adambomb]

You know, it really would have been a better solution in the end. I somehow doubt even the most unconciously strong person could pet a panda to death, Ursidae > Muridae.

Re:Approach

[maxume]

My local library carries 'Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About'.

see more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Cures_%22They%22_Don't_Want_You_to_Know_About

So what you should have said, is that any crooked dumbass can get a book published, and while your librarian is somewhat more likely to be credible than some random guy on a message board, you still can't trust them.

(really, they probably carry the book by popular request, so if you want to know what a librarian thinks about a book, you have to actually ask them...you can't rely on the fact that the library carries it)

Re:Approach

[Lord Ender]

Publishers and authors stake their reputations and their livelihood on their honesty. They have a strong incentive to be accurate. Wikipedians or other Yahoos have no incentive to be honest other than altruism.

It seems to me that your methods are highly inefficient and error-prone, and neglect any reasonable risk analysis.

Parent NSFW...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that Fark is trademarking NSFW, but you should put some kind of warning on those links :(

Unless you *want* to explain to your boss why you were reading a Yahoo answer about necrophilia...

Re:Parent NSFW...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you *want* to explain to your boss why you were reading a Yahoo answer about necrophilia...

Just tell your boss that you're an alcoholic, and were suddenly hit with the uncontrollable urge to crack open a cold one...

blame the 'tools' not the tools

[tzhuge]

All these types of stories make it as if there weren't unreliable sources prior to the current digital information age. Whatever happened to teaching students about how to use sources?

Re:blame the 'tools' not the tools

[Larry Lightbulb]

If you cut and paste from a book you have to either type it yourself, or else really cut and paste the page. Taking it from the interweb is so much easier.

Re:blame the 'tools' not the tools

[PrinceOfStorms]

I suspect that the problem has more to do with students' motivations. You can teach them all you like about source reliability, but if all they want is to pass that assignment in the shortest possible time, many of them will still use whatever then can quickly find online. It's somewhat easier in at least some of the sciences to create new questions, but in the humanities, there are only so many worthwhile questions about Columbus.

Good Enough for College

[Bruha]

I've cited Wikipedia almost exclusively in my college classes. I've never had an instructor say anything negative about it and most times I'm dinged for formatting issues rather than the content or sources of information.

Re:Good Enough for College

[R2.0]

Do you get your diploma by mail, with full credit for "life experience"?

Or does your college have the word "community" in the title?

Re:Good Enough for College

[rjh]

You have never had me as an instructor.

Here (the University of Iowa's Department of Computer Science), the general policy is that Wikipedia is not an academic reference and citing it will get you dinged hard. Reading the Wiki is fine, but you have to go to print media for citations--even preprints of journal articles are considered suspect and only accepted grudgingly.

In my experience talking to people at various institutions, very few places accept Wikipedia as a reference. I would suggest that you talk to your professors and ask them outright whether Wikipedia is an accepted reference in the department. It may prevent some unpleasant surprises in the future.

Re:Good Enough for College

[SixFactor]

I'd like to know what college you attend, as well as your major, so I can steer my kids away from said institution/field of study.

Thanks!

Re:Good Enough for College

[tcolberg]

At UCLA, the nearly every professor would announce, concurrent with announcing essay assignments, their disapproval (and occasional hatred) for Wikipedia.

Re:Good Enough for College

[Rakishi]

Christ, as others have said please tell us where you went to school so we can avoid it like the plague. Even my middle school wouldn't accept wikipedia or any other encyclopedia as a source. The point of encyclopedias is to use them as a starting point not as an actual source of information. Actually I can't remember writing a paper where wikipedia would have been of any use as a source given how it provides so little in-depth information.

Re:Good Enough for College

[hurfy]

define print media

Does that really mean peer reviewed journals? Because you can find just about anything in print claimed as fact.

On the other hand, as i recall from prehistoric times, most teachers wanted 3 sources or some such thing. That would seem to leave out JUST referencing wikipedia. Do they not want that anymore? Or are the others right and his school is a tad underwhelming?

The idea was that if 3 sources agree you are probably golden, if the 1st 3 don't agree you are going to have to keep digging and learn to resolve it. Accepting ANY single source sounds kinda lame. I would take Wikipedia as a source but almost nothing as a SOLE source.

Re:Good Enough for College

[Hatta]

I never noticed wikipedia had so much information about clowning.

Re:Good Enough for College

[rjh]

"Print media" means something written by a knowledgeable practitioner of the art and printed by a reputable outfit--i.e., not a vanity press. For instance, if you were writing a paper on the role of vitamin C in health, it would be acceptable to quote from Linus Pauling's books, despite the fact that (a) it's not a peer reviewed journal and (b) Pauling had some weird obsessions about vitamin C. Your prof would probably red-pen it and say "this has been discredited", but that's a big difference from red-penning and saying "this is not a credible reference". You can get a good grade for citing a two-time Nobel Laureate who had some crackpot ideas; you can't get a good grade for citing Wikipedia.

Re:Good Enough for College

[Miedvied]

Every professor in my university has had a policy of either: 1) Try not to go to Wikipedia, but cite it just in case you do. They will not consider this a real source, but you need to cite not to be considered a borderline plagiarist. 2) If they catch you getting data off Wikipedia, you're automatically failing the paper. And my university is a relatively lax one - the City University of New York. I can only imagine that you attend a trade school? Are you looking to become a plumber, perhaps?

Re:Good Enough for College

[AK Marc]

Wow, so being wrong, but documenting it well is better than being correct and citing something that is arbitrarily declared to be disreputable. No wonder some people think that education isn't serving them well.

I've been told that all compiled reference materials can be used as a source, but only as one source in a multiple-source paper. That is, if you use Britannica or a Wiki or whatever, you may cite it, but nothing else that is a compiled source. Who cares if that one source is discredited? You don't write papers with single sources, so you have to have other sources anyway. If URLs are inappropriate sources (seeing as how they are not "printed" or whatever), why are they included in the sources available for all reference style choices?

Re:Good Enough for College

[Polumna]

I have to agree with my previous repliers. I don't know how far along you are in your program, but I can tell you that I would have gotten more-than-dinged for citing Wikipedia in any classes 300 level or above. I didn't even go to a school that's exactly ivy league. (It is my understanding that encyclopedias aren't really "college-worthy" citation sources in general.)

That said, I still used Wikipedia for virtually every non-programming assignment I ever had. Even if citations to it directly are frowned upon, Wikipedia can still be used as a great aggregation of citations that are sufficient by most standards. Whenever you can, I recommend taking quotes and references from the same places Wikipedia does. This has the added benefit of doing a run-around on any papers with a number-of-sources requirement.

Re:Good Enough for College

[rjh]

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.

Re:Good Enough for College

[DragonWriter]

I've cited Wikipedia almost exclusively in my college classes. I've never had an instructor say anything negative about it and most times I'm dinged for formatting issues rather than the content or sources of information.

Ignoring any question of the quality of Wikipedia compared to more traditional encyclopedia, how is that any college course (much less, apparently, all of yours) lets you get away with citing a single source, and an encyclopedia at that, exclusively?

Re:Good Enough for College

[TapeCutter]

"Your prof would probably red-pen it and say "this has been discredited", but that's a big difference from red-penning and saying "this is not a credible reference"."

Appealing to authority is the anti-thesis of the scientific method and will lead to paridoxical statements like the one quoted above where "discredited" end up meaning "credible but wrong". Einstien's 1905 paper was three pages long and had zero references (although he should have given Newton a nod), to Albert's surprise it was instantly recognised as credible by figures of authority in the physics world.

It would be nice to see proffessors pull their collective heads out of their acedemic arses and judge a site by it's utility. There is no single oracle that can answer all (or even most) of your questions, but there are plenety of places to find information and cross-check.

Naturally if you are writting a paper or thesis then all citations should go to the original peer-reviewed source, but other than in those specific circumastances I fail to see why a reference to the correct answer should be dismissed on the basis of superficial and subjective criteria such as the percieved authority of the authour.

Re:Good Enough for College

[rjh]

Naturally if you are writting a paper or thesis then all citations should go to the original peer-reviewed source

As a look at this thread will show, this is exactly what I have been writing about. Given that you've just agreed with me, I don't quite know how to respond to this, except to say "thank you".

Wikipedia is a great resource for beginning your inquiry. When it comes time to write a paper you need to go elsewhere, and if you cite Wikipedia as an authority, you should expect to get dinged hard.

Re:Good Enough for College

[TapeCutter]

I was objecting to your convoluted appeal to authority that failed to mention if Pauling's vitamin C ramblings were peer-reviewed or not.

The reason you should reject WP as an academic reference is because it's an encyclopedia (ie: a second hand source). The same is true for Britannica, it has nothing to do with the physical characteristics of media or the number of Nobel's on the mantlepiece.

If it's your job to teach people how to reseach then IMHO you should try to be a little more succinct in your explainations as to why encyclopedias are unacceptable as an acedemic reference.

Re:Good Enough for College

[rjh]

So, let me get this straight:

If I say that Pauling's book should be taken seriously and allowed to be a citation in an undergraduate paper despite the book not being peer-reviewed, then I'm committing academic hubris and appealing to authority.

If I say that some anonymous patent clerk's papers should be taken seriously and allowed to be a citation in an undergraduate paper despite the clerk's papers not being substantially peer-reviewed (after all, who besides Einstein understood relativity well enough to review it?), then I'm in the clear.

So ultimately, whether citing someone is hubris or not depends entirely on whether they have two Nobel Prizes in two unrelated fields.

Your arguments are inconsistent and incoherent. You have a pretty severe anti-intellectual bias going there. I would suggest looking into that. Given that I only know how to argue with reason, and you appear to be bringing emotional values to the discussion, I'm going to have to call it finished here.

Re:Good Enough for College

[TapeCutter]

The inconsistency is in your strawman - Where did I say that Albert's work was not peer-reviewed? I did state his paper was not referenced, he assumed anyone who had a hope of understanding it would be a physicist/mathematician and would be able to follow the argument. ( Hint: I belive it is common for mathematicians to submit unreferenced proofs )

As for Pauling, every now and then there will be a book or document that triggers a revolution in thinking (Origin of species, Selfish Gene, Principa Mathematica, Bible, ect ) but the vast majority of such books end up being drivel when put to the test. Albert himself ended up ranting against quantum mechanics. Newton wrote over a million words on the significance of the number 666 and stuck needles in his own eyeball.

None of this means I'm anti-intellectual, but I have been around long enough to 'know' that smart people have a lot of crazy ideas and adherence to the philosophy of science is the best way to sort the shit from the clay. You may 'know' that Pauling was a genius and that his vitamin C book was discredited, but that's only because you researched it yourself at one point.

In short, the fact that Pauling wrote a book is good reason to read it but a poor reason to cite it unless it's claims are backed up by peer-reviewed research, in which case referencing the book is no different to referencing an encyclopedia.

Re:Good Enough for College

[Anonymous Coward]

O no a Wikvertizement.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

[Anonymous Coward]

true, librarians prefer honey.

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

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Worse. You wake up and find that she's only half covered in whipped cream.

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

[silent_artichoke]

...and so are you!

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

[Digital Vomit]

One man's nightmare is another man's -- oop, I've said too much...

Slashdot is more reliable...

[ZeroExistenZ]

as a "information" site.

I've never came across "Yahoo! answers", but what's the difference between that and a forum somewhere in a desolate place?

It reminds me at some bar, where I've never been other then in my imagination, in a inbred town where the town wiseman explains how the stars are actually firework that was shot too high while everyone nods enlightened.

Goddammit, Page 2?

[colourmyeyes]

Why is the link to the second page of TFA? Some of us like to read things in order.

Maybe I'm just rammy today.

More reliable sources.

[bobdotorg]

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

I prefer to get my answers from a more reliable source:
a more reliable source

Freedom of speech, a librarian's worst nightmare

[iamacat]

So, should we tremble and fear the end of civilization whenever people gather and discuss opinions contrary to modern science? I think this has been tried in Galileo Galilei's times. People will always hold absurd, irrational, uninformed believes and try to spread them to others. Just the other day I had a work mailing list argument with a firm believer in homeopathy. After hearing how 30C onion extract repeatedly cured his cold, I offered to rid the humanity of this disease once and for all by dropping a bag of onions into the ocean to achieve a rather more concentrated dilution. He actually retorted that I do not have the knowledge to use magic that homeopathic doctors add to the bottles!

But if we silence or ridicule all crackpot-sounding talk, we will also miss many cases where apparently outrageous stuff turns out to be true. Like prisoner torture in Iraq, global warming, or the news that the Earth rotates around the Sun. Just recently scientific studies confirmed that acupuncture works a bit better than homeopathy.

you missed my point

[circletimessquare]

it is valid to point out where the hivemind is hypocritical and inconsistent from one opinion to the next

Re:you missed my point

[bit01]

it is valid to point out where the hivemind is hypocritical and inconsistent from one opinion to the next

No, you are being hypocritical by deliberately describing /. as a hivemind when there are obviously varied opinions here. Hivemind, by definition, means of the same opinion.

If inidividual posters were being inconsistent then it might mean something. As it is all you've done is demonstrate that you have trouble thinking logically.

---

Tax payer funded courses to teach proprietary software product use are an illegal company subsidy.

Common Sense Please?

[notorious ninja]

I thought Yahoo answers was mostly people asking non-factual questions, like advice or homework help... it's the equivalent to asking a random group of people off the street a question. Does anyone really think of it as an encyclopedia??? I sure hope not!

I think you're obscuring the point.

[Chess_the_cat]

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.

I think Wikipedia is compared to Britannica because Wikipedia claims to be an encyclopedia. Yahoo! Answers makes no such claim and that is the reason a comparison between Yahoo! Answers and Britannica has not and will not be made. Yahoo! Answers does not claim to be anything more than it is: a chance to "ask the audience."

Re:I think you're obscuring the point.

[dbIII]

Citing Britannica would have got me "learn how to use the library and stop being lazy" in red pen in my first year at university. It's a start but you have to dig a little deeper since many things are oversimplified just so they can fit.

Re:I think you're obscuring the point.

[TapeCutter]

Yes, however in my day none of the lecturer's ever told me that they "hate brittanica with a passion", encyclopedias were never cited because (right or wrong) they are never the primary source.

So, what is it about WP that gives rise to such strong emotions in academics who have never bothered to try and use the site as one would use an encyclopedia?

Re:I think you're obscuring the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

You appear to have missed out the thing that belongs to the lecturer.

How to stop that nightmare:

[muuh-gnu]

>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."

So, since we all agree that "traditional reference tools" are of such a great value, and do promote science and useful arts, we have to prevent modern technology making them and the librarians business model obsolete. Lets create a new kind of right, lets call it libraryright ©, to "protect" the librarys and librarians and their hard work from being cowardly stolen. Who is with me?

Re:How to stop that nightmare:

[muuh-gnu]

(damn, hit the send button too early):

>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."

So, since we all agree that "traditional reference tools" are of such a great value, and do promote science and useful arts, we have to prevent modern technology making them and the librarians business model obsolete. Lets create a new kind of right, lets call it libraryright ©, to "protect" the librarys and librarians and their hard work from being cowardly stolen by people answering each others questions in direct P2P darknets. The LIAA (Library industry association of America) numbers losses for the US econony in the millions and lost jobs in the hundreds of thousands. Libraryright theft JUST MUST STOP! Wh o is with me?

my experience

[mugnyte]

  http://morningcuppa.blogspot.com/2006/11/answer-me.html

Now you tell me...

[butterwise]

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

Tag it "badlink" then.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the link is bad, tag it as such. Whining gets pushed too far down by moderation and early-thread replies.

I disagree and I'll tell you why

[Lawr1984]

As I've been saying , Wikipedia is much better than Yahoo answers. Much, much better.

Simple Mathematics

[LaskoVortex]

Did any one do the math when they criticized on-line resources? It takes all of 3 ms to get thousands of possible answers to a question with an online search tool. Back in my undergrad days, if I needed to know something, it was 45 minutes before I could get to the library, get a stack of books and search the text myself. This type of inefficiency is mind-boggling these days. I'm almost 40 now, have all the requisite advanced degrees, and am pulling a damn good salary at one of the world's finest educational universities--so I think I am in a position to say with some authority what is intellectually lazy and what is not in terms of researching facts. So, let me declare unambiguously that using google, wikipedia, and yahoo makes good-old-fashion sense. (Kids: don't listen to the fogies--they are bitter about their wasted youth, etc.)

As a matter of fact, I put this philosophy to practice because I've been inside a library for research exactly once in the last five years.

Re:Simple Mathematics

[PrinceOfStorms]

As an academic, all I can say is that you have no authority on the subject whatsoever in my opinion. Not because you don't go to the library, but because you think managing to almost completely avoid going to the library is something to be proud of.

Re:Simple Mathematics

[LaskoVortex]

Who said anything about pride? I haven't gone to the library because I haven't needed to, thanks to the wonders of electronic media, which you should embrace if you are serious about academics.

Here's a question.

[Chuck Chunder]

What the fuck are you talking about?

This topic has absolutely nothing to do with "regulation" or a "nanny state".

Please try and compose something vaguely coherant in future. And no, randomly inserting colons and typing something in capitals doesn't magically make your point clear.

Re:Here's a question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know, maybe from the article? The Slashdot summary? The posts? They're all about how people shouldn't be allowed to use Yahoo answers as it provides nothing useful.

Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

[DeadDecoy]

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.

Re:Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

[spastasmagoria]

Are you kidding?? I have a masters of library and information sciences and I'm an adjunct professor. I STILL do work that way!! I look at it as working smarter, not harder. If you're going to give me an idiotic question, like are aardvark young called "kittens" or "puppies" (swear to god, got this question at my last staff meeting) and expect me to not google it, then you're stupid. I guess it depends on what the aim of these questions are. Are you testing specific knowledge? Are the ten questions on this quiz the sum total of what you wanted students to get out of the unit? If that's the case, then you, and your students, are saving time to be spent elsewhere. If you're spot-checking knowledge they should have gotten by reading an entire unit on aardvark reproduction, then maybe you need to come up with some better questions. They're called pups by the way

Re:Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

[Woldry]

You make an excellent point. Sadly, I think more and more students are expecting all questions asked by teachers to be 'fill in the blank', 'short answer', or 'multiple choice' questions.

I work for an online chat reference librarian service. Time and again we get kids (from elementary school through grad school) who log in and ask a question whose answer clearly requires the exact setup from their classroom reading or lecture notes -- and they also clearly think that the librarian should be able to pop out an immediate answer like some sort of psychic search engine. Many of them clearly have not been taught even so much critical thinking as to be able to identify that their question is intimately tied to a resource that the teacher/professor gave them. Sometimes they don't even have the critical skills necessary to recognize when we are able to give them exactly the answer -- because the answer is phrased differently. ("What were the accomplishments of Martin Luther King?" is a relatively easy one to answer -- but not if you haven't been taught even enough thinking skills to understand when resource where the answer is found doesn't phrase it as "The accomplishments of Martin Luther King were .... ")

I often wonder, after a reference transaction from which both the student and I (for different reasons) leave frustrated, what kind of grades these students are getting. If the teacher simply fails them for not finding the answer, what will the student have learned? And if the teacher passes them without having taught them what they ought to have done to tackle the question, then again, what will the student have learned?

Re:Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

[DeadDecoy]

Erm... My point was, in direct response to the article, that sites like Wikipedia are not creating 'intellectual laggards', but that they are enhancing a student's ability to find basic knowledge. If teachers want more out of their students than a search-retrieval-answer, then they should factor these sites in and ask questions that require a greater depth of knowledge. For instance, if you ask a class to write a Linked List, chances are some students will just grab some sourceforge code and slap their name on it. If you ask them to create a ticket application accessed by randomly generated people, then you're more inclined to get original work because the student cannot google a quick fix.
In response to your comment, I expect students to use google and wiki's and spellcheck and more. I just think it's something teachers will have to understand and anticipate if they want to challenge their students' minds.

Re:Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

[spastasmagoria]

I know. I just meant... we need to work with the technology:) Why fight it? And I see the student's perspective (having been that student--they're looking for the path of least resistance. They're not going to skip it just because it's the high road. They need some other reason. As for expectations.. There're a few things I'd like to expect from students, but I know I can't. Remembering pens and spell checking are probably pretty high on the list.

Re:Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

[wembley fraggle]

It's true, and it's documented. Alan Schoenfeld's work in mathematics education is a good place to start for that. Students tend to think that if you cannot solve a math problem in 10 seconds (or is it 30? I forget, need to check the source) that it is impossible to solve. Students like that have no conception of the "hard problem" that takes hours or more to come to solution, and give up right away.

They think that because we teach them to think that way. It's not the teachers' faults, though. The teachers have to deal with enormous constraints, primarily due to standardized testing. All those problems CAN be solved in 10 seconds, and if the students aren't good at them, the teachers lose their jobs. It sucks, but it's true. The very tests that we implemented to "fix" our educational system have deformed the system horribly, because the tests were designed to detect basic competence but were given so much weight by legislation that they're the only thing [most] teachers pay attention to anymore. The actual high-level learning goals (learning to [think critically, solve problems, reason logically, argue, deconstruct a claim] in [science, mathematics, history, literature, art] etc) are so very difficult to test in an economically feasible manner that they aren't tested, and therefore aren't addressed.

Re:Stupid question deserves a stupid answer

[RESPAWN]

Actually, I teach standardized test preparation for the high school level (ACT and SAT) part time, and I would have to say that not all of the problems on those tests can be solved in 10 seconds. For a person well schooled in mathematics, definitely that question.

Actual Yahoo! Questions

[Squiffy]

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?

What is truth?

[AskMeLater]

Man,

What is truth? What is fact? What is reality? Do we know the things that we know?

We are all blind!

Can I just point out

[Colin Smith]

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".

Re:Can I just point out

[rueger]

God, you have totally summed up my experiences with Yahoo answers. The uninformed answering questions posed by the totally lost... what a great tool!

WOW They found that on there own?

[terrible76]

It took me three years and monthly training to teach most of the Librarians how to use tabs in Firefox. How did they find Yahoo Answers???

Here's the entire article

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Why did the summary link to just the second page of a two page article? Here's the full article on one page.

The contrast with Google Answers is remarkable

[AviN]

Yahoo! Answers is a remarkably bad place to obtain reliable information. There are exceptions, but the website consists mostly of people asking stupid questions and other people providing stupid answers.

For a brief period of time, I answered a few questions on Yahoo! Answers with answers that were correct, comprehensive, and included sources for its claims. Yet I found that often, the person asking the question or other readers would choose or vote another person's comically poor answer as the "Best Answer" instead.

Google had a similar service named Google Answers that Google shut down a few years ago:

http://answers.google.com/

All the people answering questions ("researchers") were screened and approved by Google. Google Answers required the person asking the question to pay a fee (usually a small one), most of which went to the researcher answering the question.

The quality of both questions and especially answers tended to be quite good. The contrast between Google Answers and Yahoo! Answers is quite remarkable. It is a shame Google decided to shut down Google Answers. (You can still questions asked before the shut down, but cannot ask new questions.)

They need to do way instain mother

[Dwedit]

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...

Best to learn by experience?

[moosesocks]

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.

Re:Best to learn by experience?

[Rimbo]

When I grew up, my Dad discovered FischerTechnik.

One of the brilliant things about this (which I didn't find out until just last year) was that the diagrams on how to build things would deliberately hide steps. For example, in-between step two and step four something would be added on the back half that wasn't shown. You, the child trying to build the toy, had to figure out what was missing on your own to get the thing finished. At the time, I remember noticing it, but attributing it to sloppiness; it took some effort and thought, but I always figured out what was missing. So you couldn't just build things by following the steps shown. You had to know what you were doing.

This helped me much later in life when buying furniture from Ikea.

Now that my son's turned 3, Dad's sending me the starter set to give to him for Christmas... he kept every last piece of it, all these years.

Re:Best to learn by experience?

[spastasmagoria]

ALL sources should be cited, period, end of story. But I think our job as teachers and librarians is to teach students how to determine the veracity of the information they find both in print and on the internet. Some sources are heavily slanted due to who they're published by, or what they're trying to do (persuade, sell something, make an argument against the other side, etc). Propiganda and misinformation are not exclusive to the web! The only difference is that it's much easier to say things without consequence on your Blogspot blog or random Wikipedia article. Those things are a place to start, but they are not authoritative in any sort of way. It's like asking your mom how the sound of thunder is made. She may tell you a wive's tale, or she may know the very precise and detailed scientific explanation. Both sound equally good, but both are just relying on what someone told her, and what she remembered. There's very little authoritative about it (unless your mother happens to be a meteorologist). We do not teach students how to vet information, which is part of information literacy. I think this is a valuable learning experience we're losing out on because we want to stick our heads in the sand and just ban internet sources or pretend like they're all created equal.

Re:Best to learn by experience?

[Fantastic Lad]

Did your dad know that the instructions were deliberately limited?

I can see the benefits from such methods. One of which is teaching early on that you can't trust people because they're going to try to manipulate your head through trickery. --I could generally smell that brand of adult nonsense from a mile away as a kid when it was used directly. When it came in the form of television or print media, (like instruction guides), it wasn't until Jr. High that I realized that deliberate manipulation in the form of official communication extended far beyond parents and teachers out into the commercial and official world. --It is this reason that I never swallow the rationality that problems are more likely to be mistakes than deliberate attempts to mislead. People are constantly trying to mess with your perceptions through official means and few see it, whereas people will often see dishonesty where there is none to be found. The world is a baffling place to live until one learns these subtle lessons. While my father believed in "reading the instructions", he also knew how to respect my own learning style.

He taught me how to use tools and electronics and such. He gave me my own tool box with a basic compliment of items inside when I was six and gave me full access to his well-equipped work shop so long as I, "put it back in its proper place," when I was done. He taught me the correct use and application of each tool and then simply backed off and let me pound my head against the problems I invented for myself. Like, "How do I make a working pinball machine?" --If I went to him for answers, he would talk it out straight with me, but would only on the very rare occasion take over. He always sighed with disappointment when I gave up on a problem and begged him to do it for me. "You were doing fine. This isn't how you learn."

I didn't go much in for controlled environment learning; even as a child I knew that things with instruction sheets were limiting and taught not only too much respect for authority and controlled processes, but that they also offered a cheap way out from learning to explore the world without instructions.

Of course, there's no real right way. Each kid will know how best they are designed to interact with the world.

-FL

Re:Best to learn by experience?

[Rimbo]

Did your dad know that the instructions were deliberately limited?

Yes, he did. He'd known it all along. That's one reason why he was so impressed with it. Another is, well, FischerTechnik is just damned impressive.

My son turns 3 on Thursday. And under the Christmas tree, he's going to have his first-ever FischerTechnik toy waiting for him, courtesy of his Dad and his Dad's Dad.

Re:Best to learn by experience?

[Fantastic Lad]

My son turns 3 on Thursday. And under the Christmas tree, he's going to have his first-ever FischerTechnik toy waiting for him, courtesy of his Dad and his Dad's Dad.

Ahh. That sounds really nice. It's good to have these little traditions. Best holiday wishes to you!

-FL

good enough for Fry

[stormguard2099]

"Good Old Coney Island College - Go Whitefish!"

Yes and no, sorta

[Moraelin]

Well, yes and no, sorta.

If used as you describe, true, it's _sometimes_ better than nothing.

Then again, sometimes worse than nothing. An incomplete, distorted understanding of something may actually compound the problem, instead of making it any better. E.g., an incomplete, distorted mis-understanding of each other is largely why we have a perpetual conflict in the Middle East, or Islamist nuts blowing themselves up. E.g., an equally unqualified monkey reinforcing an already wrong idea, might just give people enough confidence to do something very stupid, instead of staying at the stage of wondering about it. Etc.

Seriously, we already have people taking their knowledge from movies, urban legends, PR, whatever. You can read about some of them, for example, on the various "dumbest criminals" lists. A site looking like a more reputable way to get a quick and supposedly informed answer, might just fool more people.

The second problem is that more and more schoolkids and students are using those as a substitute for learning or thinking for themselves. Now this isn't necessarily a fault of the site itself. And if it worked for anyone, I'd blame the school first. Nevertheless, it might bite us all in the arse later. Hard.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[vertinox]

The second problem is that more and more schoolkids and students are using those as a substitute for learning or thinking for themselves.

That is more of a problem of how information and logic works rather than the learning process.

Example, do I really need to actually pretend I'm in the late 1860s and come up with my own periodic table from scratch going through each element and determining how many neutrons and protons it has without borrowing any knowledge whatsoever from resources.

No.

Should I learn the theory and the concepts about how Mendeleev came about with the periodic table and understand the idea that this also is related to the amount of neutrons and protons an element has?

Yes. It would be useful.

Should I memorize the exact order each and every single element and remember their names in that order?

Well... I remember Hydrogen is first followed by Helium (and something about noble gases) but beyond that I think unless you work with it on a daily basis, that is what Google is for.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[conlaw]

However, students should still be required to memorize their multiplication tables. One shouldn't need a calculator to figure out that 7 x 8 =72^^56

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[hansoloaf]

How do you know if "more and more schoolkids are using these as a substitute for learning or thinking for themselves?"

Can you cite any reference?

To me it seems that at least they are looking up answers on their own and there's always a possibility that they would research the answers further via google or any other sources.

I trust human nature.. no it's not perfect but I think lot of people will survive even with Yahoo! Answers.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[Kadin2048]

However, students should still be required to memorize their multiplication tables. One shouldn't need a calculator to figure out that 7 x 8 =72^^56

Why?

Why should we bother spending a year (in my childhood, it was basically the whole of the third grade) drilling multiplication tables into childrens' heads, when in all likelihood they'll spend their entire lives not twelve inches away from a device that can do it a million times faster than they'll ever hope to? I'd rather spend the same time teaching them some real mathematical concepts, or about the difference between correlation and causation, than teaching them how to do something that's essentially a party trick.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[75th Trombone]

drilling multiplication tables into childrens' heads, when in all likelihood they'll spend their entire lives not twelve inches away from a device that can do it a million times faster

Ehhh, I gotta object to this one. It's way faster to do low-number multiplication in your head than it is to do punch it in a calculator. Can you imagine if you had to whip out a calculator or scrawl on some paper every time you wanted to multiply 12 by 8?? Also, for mathematically inclined people, multiplication tables are an excellent way to introduce them to some rudimentary arithmetic patterns.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[AvitarX]

You're one of those people at restaurants that uses a PDA to calculate tis, aren't you?

I do simple math all the time, ad usually it would be a real PITA to grab a calculator. You probably simply undervalue the ability to do simple multiplication because you can do t simply and effectively. Though it is perhaps possible that you are special and were in a slow class, which is why it took so long. We did it in 12 weeks, with actual lessons involving critical thinking (basic word problems, dividing cheerios into equal groups and eating them, probably some analog clock stuff (I guess we should stop teaching that too though?). On Monday we would get something to take home and study, it would be every thing up to 12xN where N was that weeks number. On Wednesday we would review it, and Friday a test.

It was constantly re-enforced well throughout high-school and as an adult, by the humiliation in needing a calculator for basic math.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[rnj]

Should I memorize the exact order each and every single element and remember their names in that order? Well... I remember Hydrogen is first followed by Helium (and something about noble gases) but beyond that I think unless you work with it on a daily basis, that is what Google is for. Tom Lehrer can also help. http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html/

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[Espinas217]

Isn't multiplication tables what matters, the important thing is the process and the exercise. That helps them develop their memory and gives them a very basic case of a mathematical problem, its rules and solution. What most people miss when thinking about the contents of education is that the content are not always the important part, sometimes the contents are just a mean to an end which is to develop some skill.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[DM9290]

"E.g., an incomplete, distorted mis-understanding of each other is largely why we have a perpetual conflict in the Middle East, or Islamist nuts blowing themselves up."

My understanding of Islam is perfectly clear. Allah is all knowing, and hates those who are unjust.

Re:Yes and no, sorta

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, get real, no one can do 12x8 in their head. 99% of the population never learned past 10x10 (of the ones who even learned multiplication tables).

Re:Freedom of speech, a librarian's worst nightmar

[Anonymous Coward]

> So, should we tremble and fear the end of civilization whenever people gather and discuss opinions contrary to modern science?

Fear the end of SANE and RATIONAL civilization, yes. If you enjoy living in a fear-dominated theocracy without prescription eyewear, antibiotics, computers, airplanes, reliable crop production, painkillers in dentistry, ER doctors, moving pictures, telephones, recorded and secular music, running hot and cold potable water, and freedom to discuss unpopular viewpoints without being burned at the stake, then perhaps science isn't for you.

Indeed, the biggest problem with Yahoo Answers

[Colin Smith]

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

And teach them to do so

[Xelios]

With every answer a few mouse clicks away maybe it's time we start teaching children how to filter the good information from the bad, instead of just teaching them how to regurgitate facts on a piece of paper. Wikipedia is a great research tool when used correctly, Yahoo Answers is a great way to get a quick "close enough" answer to a question that's been bugging you. If kids were taught this simple distinction this debate would be pointless.

This "problem" of too much information is only going to get worse, lets start teaching kids how to deal with it.

Re:And teach them to do so

[PitaBred]

And the first step in that process is to leave some children behind and let them get an F if they screw up.

Oh! The irony...

[Etherwalk]

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

I don't know about you guys

[Anonymous Coward]

but I think that any site that can answer questions like this has got to be a great reference.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aj9rT9m867D2IE5x59qGUbPD7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20071210145304AARvTtZ

Wikipedia vs. Yahoo Answers - Deathmatch!

[Spy der Mann]

Yahoo! Answers in Wikipedia.

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

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?

Plato: Writing vs. Memorization

[handy_vandal]

"For educators fretting that the Internet is creating a generation of 'intellectual sluggards' ..."

Plato lamented how the invention of writing caused men to lose the ability -- formerly widespread, and held in great esteem -- to memorize tens of thousands of lines of verse (e.g. Homer's Iliad).

The invention of the pocket calculator, and its subsequent widespread use in classrooms, raised similar complaints among math teachers in the 1970's.

Every generation raises children conversant with the technologies of the day.

-kgj

Re:Plato: Writing vs. Memorization

[arth1]

Every generation raises children conversant with the technologies of the day.

-kgj
--
-kgj

The next generation might even master the technology of the .signature

Re:Plato: Writing vs. Memorization

[BZ]

Just in the 70s?

The unfortunate part of not using and understanding arithmetic (because the calculator can do it) is that you don't understand little things like long division. This isn't hypothetical; I've encountered people in college who couldn't really do long division.

Problems start when you have to take college-level math classes (tend to be required for graduation). The Euclidean algorithm? Have to do division with remainder. Limits of polynomial functions? Have to do long division of polynomials. Integration of rational functions? Long division of polynomials with remainder.

Now of course one can build all this into the calculator. But this is just one elementary school arithmetic algorithm we're talking about here....

In the end, you need to be able to do arithmetic unaided, simply because you might well need to do it on objects your calculator doesn't understand.

Re:Plato: Writing vs. Memorization

[Anonymous Coward]

Plato never (so far as we know) went to India, where the skill and training it takes to memorize thousands of lines of verse was long preserved, and is still valued in certain contexts. The language of choice: Sanskrit...

Re:Plato: Writing vs. Memorization

[handy_vandal]

[Calculators in classrooms debate] Just in the 70s?

I don't mean to suggest that the debate vanished after the 70s. I was a high school student in the 70s, the memory is vivid in my mind. I don't know what high schools are teaching these days; I suppose the debate continues.

I agree with all your points about the value of learning arithmetic.

Useful? Perhaps, but no Wikipedia

[SiriusStarr]

Yahoo! Answers can come in handy. Yes, I can actually bring myself to say that. I will admit that it is occasionally useful when you are looking for some incredibly eclectic answer to an incredibly eclectic question. It will never match Wikipedia though. Like the article says, it simply does not have the peer-moderation that Wikipedia does, nor the strive for excellence and accuracy. You may argue with me, but you do have to admit that while Wikipedia has had some rather visible instances of abuse and misdirection, in general the community does its best to provide accurate, insightful reference. I think that Answers could prove to be so much more if they would just institute the kind of mass-collaborative production/moderation that Wikipedia uses.

Deep enough for college?!

[spaceyhackerlady]

Actually I can't remember writing a paper where wikipedia would have been of any use as a source given how it provides so little in-depth information.

CLICK!

There is a great deal of information on the internet, but it's all a surface gloss of "knowledge", and there is very little depth on anything, anywhere.

Even the science-oriented part of Yahoo Answers is a joke. You don't learn by bombarding "experts" with questions. You learn by hitting the books (or suitable analogues - I'm not a total Luddite... :-) and figuring things out. You need the background, how things fit together and relate to each other, before you can use the information provided by experts - assuming the experts really are experts, and are dispensing real information, not bullshit.

...laura who has typed a few bullshit answers in to Yahoo Answers herself

Re:Deep enough for college?!

[uniquename72]

There is a great deal of information on the internet, but it's all a surface gloss of "knowledge", and there is very little depth on anything, anywhere. Actually, nearly every peer-reviewed journal is on the internet, and often the electronic version is considered the version of record (that is, more correct than the paper one, because it can be updated and fixed).

Additionally, more and more books are being put online, as are digitized primary sources.

The internet is a fabulous source of information; Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers, on the other hand, are not.

they both have their uses but.....

[thephydes]

what is scary is that most if not all of my students wouldn't know an authoritative answer from a half baked opinion based on semi-learned and understood "facts" that their best friends sister told them. If you don't believe me, try Google, Wikipedia and Yahoo for the answer to i^i. You'll get the correct answer from two and crap from the third. So the problem is not the source, but in an age where "knowledge" has been liberated, being able to sift the crap from the good stuff is becoming more important with each passing day. Talking of crap sifting and Google, there seems to be an underlying assumption, also amongst my students, that Google knows best. Online research skills..... sorry folks they have to be taught.

Re:they both have their uses but.....

[tylerni7]

http://www.google.com/search?q=i%5Ei

Although a quick Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit#i_and_Euler.27s_formula search would show that there are an infinite number of solutions, if one wanted a usable answer quickly, Google does just fine. I agree that if one wanted to use Yahoo! Answers to get an answer to that, it probably would be crap, but most people would type i^i into a Google search before anything else.

This is why people use Ask Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

If only those poor bastards had come to Ask Slashdot. Just look at how much trouble we could've saved them!

- What is the best way to hint to your parents that you are pregnant?

1) Ready a video camera & tape this.
2) Find your parents, then say "Mom? Dad? I'm pregnant."
3) Post the "reactions" video on YouTube.

- How do my mum and dad want to renew my wedding vow?

They probably want you to get married in a church this time instead of in Vegas so all their friends will stop asking why they weren't invited to your wedding.

- Do lesbian cheerleaders really exist?

No, much like the moon, they're a ridiculous liberal myth.

- How powerful does a telescope have to be to see the moon?

I think I already said that the moon is a ridiculous liberal myth. Therefore, you'll need a telescope with a negative index of refraction. Consult this guy for details.

- How can I master the art of Levitation?

Gather enough power wands for an anti-gravity lozenge. Watch out for the koalas with nunchucks. Unlike the Black Manta, you are NOT a ninja.

Alternatively, you can try joining that cult with the gold-domed roof in some cornfield in Iowa. No, not the state capitol building, dumbass, the OTHER place with a gold dome that's in the middle of some cornfield.

- Swimming at the waterslides and have to pee really bad... What to do??

Let nature take its course. Oh, and give me advance notice so I can avoid that water park.

- My BODY is my own ENEMY? WHAT would you do if YOU were IN my POSITION?

Go visit a water park. I'll let you know which one is best once I hear back from my, umm, informant.

- What kind of shampoo does Ozzy Osbourne use?

Most likely some organic shampoo made from hemp. How else do you explain the smell?

- My nipples are wierd???!!?

Yes. Yes, they are. I suggest disconnecting the battery, though. That just makes you look weird.

- Is it true if you put blood in someones food they will go crazy?

That's what they WANT you to believe.

- How many years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds are in 200300 if you divide it by 360?

That depends on what calendar you're using and how you calculate it. If you're using Excel, the answer is clearly 10,000. If you use a Pentium, it's about 9,999.99999873

- Do female animals have G Spot?

That's what SHE said.

- Unfortunately, I have very little common sense.

Thanks, but we already know why you're here.

- Is there a way to make my nostrils bigger without surgery?

Beans. Refer to Wikipedia's article on stuffing beans up your nose. Just ignore all those POV-pushers that like to vandalize that page with a "don't" as if they can tell US what to do.

- Do mice really explode???

Computer mice? No. Rodents? Yes, but you'll need some TNT. Search YouTube for tips and advice.

- Automatic toilets scare me. Am I alone?

Yes. Which is why I suggest you join a clique on Facebook or MySpace. Might I suggest the "Biggest Loser Club"? I hear it's very exclusive. They have just one member so far: you.

"allowed"?

[Chuck Chunder]

They are all saying that Yahoo Answers is rubbish. I haven't seen one person advocate that people should somehow be prevented from using it.

I might say that you and the original guy I replied to are both posting crap. That is not the same as saying you shouldn't be allowed to post or others shouldn't be able to read you.

Re:"allowed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what are you saying? Why bring it up in the first place? Why complain about it other than to condemn it and try and forbid it? The only reason this would be news is to try and shut down Yahoo Answers.

Re:"allowed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's retarded. That's like saying you shouldn't be allowed to complain about anything.

This is the internet, man! "People bitching" is the second highest use of bandwidth.

Re:"allowed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

People are allowed to complain. But when people start trying to shut things down, that's where we have to draw the line.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

mod parent up

[circletimessquare]

dead on

CustomizeGoogle is your friend

[kjfitz]

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

This article needs cleanup.

[1stdoc]

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

Re:Freedom of speech, a librarian's worst nightmar

[Miedvied]

The aforementioned studies were not comparing homeopathy and acupuncture; they were comparing real pain-killers vs. acupuncture, and part of the study design naturally compared them vs. placebo (which I suppose is the same as homeopathy). The study design began by selecting patients for whom traditional remedies had already failed, and split them into an acupuncture group and a 'traditional group'. You can see the selection bias at work: there is no blinding, and *one of the groups has already proven not to respond to the treatment it's recieving!* The 'traditional' group would not even benefit from placebo effect, because they knew they were continuing to receive the traditional therapy that had failed them. Moreover, the acupuncture group was allowed 2 (or was it 3? I forget) 'rescue' treatments of traditional pain relievers per week, without being considered to be a 'failing' regimen. The 'traditional' group was not, creating an uneven standard of success and failure. Ultimately, it's not surprising that the acupuncture group showed a result better than 'placebo'. The placebo here was of tablet form, and thus not truly blinded: it was a "placebo" for a treatment they already knew didn't work! The 'traditional' group obviously was going to do worse, as again, the patients were rounded up from a sample for whom that treatment had already failed. And last, the bar for success was lower in the case of acupuncture. Better studies in which acupuncture is compared against retractable needles (that is, acupuncture placebo) has shown no advantage over placebo. All said, the moral of the story is that a poorly designed study can support any conclusion one wants to see.

Re:What the fuck am I talking about?

[Chuck Chunder]

i guess you do

Apparantly you have comprehension problems too. I do not know what you are talking about. I'd have thought the question: "What the fuck are you talking about?" might have indicated that. Perhaps it was too subtle?

Library Reference is Dying

[Librarian Dan]

What Yahoo Answers demonstrates quite well is that library reference doesn't matter to most people. Few of the questions that get asked on these question sites would be asked of librarians by our beloved patrons. While highly educated librarians sit at the reference desk with their authoritative sources and sensible shoes, folks are going online to look up answers themselves or ask these sites with inconsistent reliability. And why wouldn't they? It's going to be pretty hit-or-miss on getting good answers from librarians on cheat codes and Yu-gi-oh cards. To keep out stats up, we start counting as reference questions helping people sign up for Internet computers and showing someone the difference between the left and right mouse buttons. Some libraries and states are using Virtual Reference so 30 kids can ask a librarian the same homework question. Then the librarian from some unknown library can show them, one at a time, how to use Google well.

Re:Library Reference is Dying

[spastasmagoria]

I don't buy into that whole librarian as the gatekeeper of knowledge thing thing, and I think thats where the perception of a reference librarian's power derives. I like to help people find information, and occasionally I get a tricky one that is either not readily available on the internet (mayor of Philadelphia in 1903--and there were two, btw. It was an election year) or people who don't know where to begin with a topic. I think our major challenge is helping people find verified information. Billie Piper was Doctor Who's companion, not an Apollo Astronaut (don't even ask--kids believe anything they read on the internet). We need to help them discern what's probably good information and what's probably NOT good information (I don't want to say that anything is hard and fast right/wrong, even in print--because it's less likely that print was updated 34 times by opposing factions the way Wikipedia articles are). I think that practically needs to be community outreach at this point.

The watchers council will be crusht...

[Anonymous Coward]

...where should they hide buffy?

hmm

[geekoid]

" it doesn't help them cheat all that well."

The their grades will reflect that. The way people see if a students has studied needs to change.

SlashVertizement?

[7-Vodka]

Ever heard of Push Polling? That's where people call your house under the guise of conducting a poll and then feeds you information with leading questions designed to shape your opinion on a topic instead of assessing it.

This slashdot article seems to be a mix of push polling and advertisement on slashdot.
Why did the submitter word his "Question" in such an obvious way to make wikipedia come off looking so well?

Re:SlashVertizement?

[ricera10]

Welcome to Slashdot?

Re:SlashVertizement?

[ShaunC]

This slashdot article seems to be a mix of push polling and advertisement on slashdot.
Why did the submitter word his "Question" in such an obvious way to make wikipedia come off looking so well?

Come, now, based on your UID, you ought to have this figured out. Everyone knows that the Wikipedia Slashvertisements refer to "Jimbo" Wales by [nick]name, and paint a sinister conspiracy theory in order to encourage massive amounts of discussion. We've had a couple of them in the past week, but this isn't one of 'em. This is just Yahoo sucking ass.

Re:SlashVertizement?

[antispam_ben]

So Slashdot is the new Usenet...

Re: "mistakes"

[TaoPhoenix]

I once talked to some overzealous missionaries who would accidentally make two subtle errors of logic while demonstrating their beliefs that would cancel each other out, thus allowing them to remain content with their faith.

I would mention them at the next discussion that there were two such mistakes during the previous day's discussion, and then pose a counter argument that explicitly depended upon those two mistakes not being there. At the time I liked doing that, but it was an absolutely fantastic way of making them hate me through and through, because they had to think on their own rather than believe by rote whatever was written in the bible.

worthwhile doesn't mean correct, though

[Trepidity]

Books are chosen for libraries because someone might find them useful someday. Horribly biased books by well-known people almost automatically get in. Books with outright lies in them get in, especially if the subject is politics, but also if it's science. Less extremely, books with lots of selective coverage get in.

It's not universally true, but in my experience a book is only really useful as an introduction to an area if you know something about the book's author and how the book has been received by others in the area. Wikipedia is usually better about presenting that sort of information up front---if there are differences of opinion in a field, a Wikipedia article is fairly likely to mention both of them, whereas a book by one "camp" may well completely ignore the other camp or grossly misconstrue it.

Already have a generation of sluggards...

[hung_himself]

Man, this happens every generation. If we only taught the multiplication tables, banned calculators, go back to the one room school house with the 3 R's led by teachers armed with leather straps and school prayer, the world would be a better place.

I for one welcome our new information overlords. Maybe it'll finally force people to learn a truly useful skill - how to filter out the information and decide what are good sources and bad sources. Learn how to think critically, skeptically rather than blindly following the words of encyclopaedias, textbooks, dictionaries, Walter Cronkite and the translators of the Vulgate.

Or would that be too dangerous...?

It's all about the citations

[enjo13]

Wikipedia itself can hardly be considered 'reliable.' However, it's the single best starting point for almost anything I've needed to research recently. Most articles are decently cited, providing direct links to sources that ARE considered to reliable. For that, it's invaluable.

One librarian's view

[spastasmagoria]

The problem isn't with kids getting answers off the internet. I personally look at it as a shortcut, and as someone said, a place to start when I don't have a freakin' clue where to start looking. It can at least tell you whether the search term you're looking for is animal, vegetable or mineral. The problem: Kids are not taught how to check the veracity of their internet sources. While book sources are fallable, they at least go through a more thorough screening process (in most cases) than things on, say, Wikipedia or About.com. Kids also tend to think they're the best internet searchers in the world, when really they're the worst. They don't know how to narrow search terms, in addition to vetting their sources. If they type in a name, and a company name or sales website comes up first, they will assume that that site is the best site, because Google had it first in the search results. I don't believe the internet helps students cheat (except for in cases when they're copying and pasting/plagiarizing, or the purpose of the assignment is to learn how to use book resources). I don't believe in wasting students' time. If we allow them to learn things efficiently, then we'll have time for them to learn more things. Also, why reinvent the wheel, or spend time searching for information across a dozen books that someone has condensed into a convenient, time-saving article on the internet? Time management is something we need to teach our young as well! Teaching kids how to properly use the information on the internet is just part of information literacy. Of course, a lot of teachers and libraries are dropping the ball when it comes to this completely, or are just missing out on an important teaching opportunity. They either say "no internet sources" or just turn a blind eye to where the information is coming from. That is doing a disservice to young people that we are trying to teach critical thinking and problem solving skills to. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that things like Yahoo! Answers are not going away. We can either teach students how to use these tools properly, or we can continue to whine about the quality of the work they hand in. We're the instructors, we need to INSTRUCT them on the use of the resource. Otherwise we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Re:Freedom of speech, a librarian's worst nightmar

[Artifakt]

For a while in the 1990s, there were some well credentialed people who were reporting some odd findings that might have supported homeopathy. This is described in brief on this webpage (#4).

http://www.sixside.com/13_things_that_do_not_make_sense.htm

Eventually, the argument was tested by James Randi and Horizon:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathy.shtml

who settled the question to at least my satisfaction (No it doesn't work).

However, the best explanation for homeopathic results left involves the placebo effect.

If you actually went to the first link I provided, then you may have noticed that the very first of the 13 things that do not make sense is our explanation of the placebo effect. There's a very strange flaw in the whole placebo model. This is why there's a need for crackpottery. Here, responsible science can say that homeopathy doesn't work, but it turns out there's a need to be very cautious in explaining why homeopathy sometimes appears to work. Justified confidence in the argument against homeopathy itself has tended to lead to much more than justified confidence in explaining why some people still believe in homeopathy.

Yahoo! Answers vs Wikipedia

[roror]

stupid: What is the meaning of life, universe and everything?
Yahoo! Answer: 42
Wikipedia: First you need to ask the right question.

Re:Yahoo! Answers vs Wikipedia

[pablo.cl]

The right question is very simple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything

sig follies

[handy_vandal]

The next generation might even master the technology of the .signature

D'oh -- !

My bad. Thanks for catching this -- I'd forgotten about the sig.

Errata

[TapeCutter]

Actually, you did mention peer-review but then implied it didn't matter because of who he was - this is most definitely a "red pen" mistake by any standard of academic research.

Librarian panic

[FuzzballtheGreat]

I don't see why Yahoo! answers would be a nightmare for librarians, perse; personally, I would put it more in the teacher's area. Anyway. Libraries are moving up in the world, or trying to, with big projects for digitizing materials and updating catalogues. One of the things involved is the new Web 2.0 and 3.0 developments. They are asking for interactivity, for new ways of searching. Libraries (from what I've heard) are looking at things like Second Life, and Wiki, and all the comment pages on Amazon, and wanting to become like them. Instead of a library's worst nightmare, we've stumbled on their wet dream ;)

Yahoo answers make me cringe

[skintigh2]

Every time I look for an answer there I find one of two things:
1) Someone asked my question, someone else didn't understand the question and answered a different question, and the thread was locked.
2) I find a related question to which I know the answer in depth, someone else didn't understand the questions and answered a different question, and the thread was locked.

Fucking worthless.

At least students aren't paying it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo! has nothing on studentoffortune.com, where students buy and sell homework questions like it's going out of style. It looks like some bloke earned a few thousand quid selling Java homework answers. Go figure.

The paid answers model

[ribuck]

... 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 at these examples from paid Q&A site uclue.com, for example.

Amazon NowNow

[slim]

The NowNow service on the Amazon Kindle tackles this by requiring answers to contain a URL. Hence the answerer is at least nudged into providing a source.

There's no telling what quality that source will be, but at least it provides the beginning of a trail towards a decent source.

I am a totally unreliable source

[Chysn]

> In the last two years, there's been a heated debate over whether Wikipedia is as trustworthy as
> Encyclopedia Britannica.

Less than two years ago I wrote an article on Wikipedia about a people that actually existed and have at least a minor degree of historical relevance. That article was intentionally full of (1) plagiarized material (2) intermingled with altered facts (3) peppered with untrue things that I just made up.

As long as that article is still on Wikipedia (and presumably well afterwards), it couldn't possibly be as trustworthy as Britannica. After all, Britannica is written entirely by British people, and they always sound much more clever than those of us from the southeastern US.

Depends on what you want

[Divide By Zero]

If you want more Yahoo! Answers points or to be highly rated, yes. You also have the problem of the "winner" being decided by somebody who doesn't know. Imagine a quiz show wherein the host doesn't have the right answers, all three contestants ring in and respond, and then the host picks. That's kinda what Yahoo! Answers is.

If you're looking for factual answers, it's also a nightmare due to the fact that it's populated by a metric butt-ton of twelve year olds, doing the asking, answering, and voting. By and large, they don't know how to configure a Cisco 3825 or who suggested that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The SNR on Yahoo! Answers is so low that it borders on useless as a research tool. When I'm feeling charitable, I'll pop over there and answer a few questions in an area I have expertise in and where the correct answer isn't already written, but if you don't know, cross-check ANYTHING you read there, and whatever you cross-check it with, you probably should have started there.

If you feel that your question can be adequately answered by going over to your local middle school or junior high at recess or lunchtime, getting up on something tall and shouting your question, and you just don't feel like going to the trouble, Yahoo! Answers is a fine resource. Questions in this category tend to include, "whats an awesome sk8board?" and "who here likes fergie?". For more complicated questions, you might get a knowledgeable human passing on the sidewalk to answer, but don't bet on it.

The Slashdot Polls are a more scientific resource, and their warning could be applied to Y!A with a few minor modifications: This whole thing is wildly unreliable. Respondent bias, ignorance, people messing with you, you name it. If you're using these answers to do anything important, you're insane.

I miss Google Answers

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to peruse it in my free time at work and people asked really interesting questions, from code to legal to everyday things. I even had a couple of my own questions answered quite satisfactorily. There was a real community and people liked certain Answerers as well...Yahoo Answers is just shite in comparison.

Kinda fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Was playing around and realized it was kind of fun doing some high school chem problems again. Of course, I get to skip any questions I don't feel like answering, so it's not like realling doing homework. And once I get bored I can stop, or start feeding people the wrong answers. Frankly though, it's amazing how lazy some of the question-askers are.

Let them use Yahoo

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Let them continue to use Yahoo! Answers. When they get tired of mediocre results and wrong answers they will learn. If they don't learn; so what? They'll get what they deserve.

Case in point

[skintigh2]

Someone asks a question about survival, people reply with answers that will actually kill you in a survival situation, and the thread gets locked as "resolved."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070602064524AAEctAk

Re:pick a subject matter

[s4m7]

"He uses statistics as a drunk uses a light post, for support rather than illumination"

Bellcurve? but you said slashdot agrees. If the answer to a question is either "agree" or "disagree", how do you plot a bellcurve out of that?

Besides, you got modded "troll." I'm not so sure slashdot agrees with you.