
Stack Exchange CEO: "Nobody Wants To Find Yahoo Answers In Their Search Results" - thankuz
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/12/founder-stories-stack-overflows-joel-spolsky-nobody-wants-to-find-yahoo-answers-in-their-search-results/
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pg
Just last night I used search to ask a question (where to go to watch planes
take off and land at SFO) and found the answer on a Yahoo Answers page.

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argv_empty
I'll take StackExchange over Yahoo Answers for technical topics (where YA is
mainly populated by kids posting their homework and spammers advertising
tutorial sites unrelated to the question), but YA has been effective for
getting information on popular opinion (e.g. what people think are good
restaurants where I'm going), expectations in social situations I'm rarely in
(e.g. how to properly tip a bartender), etc.

In both cases, it's nice that I'm never the first to want a particular
question answered.

~~~
rokhayakebe
"Opinion" is the keyword here.

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Tycho
I don't think that's true at all. Yahoo Answers has often proved useful for
me. It also lacks the snootiness of SO. TechCrunch seems to have a serious
vendetta against Yahoo. Or maybe Yahoo-bashing is just cool right now. But I
remember when the Yahoo CEO mocked Arrington on stage during an interview. It
seems personal.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
My problem with Yahoo answers is the number of times I've come across answers
that are out right wrong (sometimes to the point of being dangerous) and
supported by a number other people, with no right answer in sight. For this
reason I completely avoid Yahoo answer regarding any topic I'm ignorant of.

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exch
This is the reason why I occasionally do answer question on YA! If nobody
comes in to fix the obvious errors, it will always be full of nonsense.

The real danger is that the site is used buy a lot of young people who will
consistently walk away with a completely skewed and incorrect notion of the
subject they are asking about.

As they say: "Be the change you want to see around you".

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danilocampos
I'm not sure that grassroots corporate welfare through band-aiding a broken,
crappy product with a sewer for a community and zero moderation is what Ghandi
really had in mind, there.

Much more effective would be to advance the cause of workable communities or
products while starving out the page views of ones beyond repair.

~~~
ajays
The name is Gandhi, not Ghandi.

And Gandhi never added qualifiers to his statement. As a matter of fact, the
more broken a system is, the more it needs good people to step up and affect
change.

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rokhayakebe
CEOs should be careful about their public statements. I am going to bookmark
this page because I am sure some day another high-rising CEO will say "Nobody
wants to find SO answers in their search results".

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db42
What you are saying looks good for making an argument, but seriously, he is
saying the truth to some extent.

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nostrademons
The truth _now_. The problem is that words on the Internet live forever, and
most people don't bother to pay attention to date stamps. At some point in the
future, StackExchange will be the hulking behemoth that nobody likes, and then
people will dig up this post and say "turnabout's fair play".

(It just occurred to me that someday I may come to regret all my HN comments.
Gulp. Ah well, it's been fun so far.)

~~~
catshirt
so you should not provide subjective commentary on the internet because _one
day it might not be true_?

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rglullis
Yes. Or at least be specific so people can tell whether you are providing
commentary or reporting on concrete facts.

Even subjective commentary needs to provide context, if it's meant to be
useful.

Take the case with Joel (or at least the headline): Joel is saying, basically,
"Yahoo Answers suck". It misses context: why does it suck? Does it _always_
suck? Apparently it doesn't _always_ , given that most upvoted comment here is
PG giving a reasonable counter-example.

The thing is, objective statements are boring and don't make the headlines. If
Joel went to an interview only to say "Gee-whiz, actually SO is doing well
because we managed to provide a decent alternative to EE, but for non-
programming topics people are still being served by more established players
like Yahoo Answers.", there would be no headline for Techcrunch, and we
wouldn't be wasting our time discussing about this.

~~~
catshirt
you're right. but that's the kind of thing that got techcrunch where they are,
right? it's easy to point back at your accurate predictions, and not remind
anyone of the wrong ones.

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dirtyaura
The headline is sensational, but the interview is good.

I've always liked Joel's observation of Usenet nit-picking culture and how
it's likely related to easy quoting.

I haven't followed discussion about StackExchange site creation and user
acquisition models, but I think that Joel's practical, organic approach is
good. Although there isn't StackExchange for medical professionals yet, if the
growth rates are what they claim, it might be that in the near future there
are enough doctors participating in cooking, photography and all the other SE
sites, that medical SE site will emerge.

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CurrentB
His comments on Yahoo Answers' traffic coming from users migrating from
Myspace struck me as way off. No one "hangs out" on Yahoo Answers because
their tired the lack of anonymity on Myspace. The masses didn't leave Myspace
because of any form of stalking.

Interesting interview overall I guess but his comments on this subject really
annoyed me for some reason.

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iamgoat
That seemed a bit strange to me too. For all I know, Yahoo Answer users are
there because they are young, they know the Yahoo brand (maybe from their
parents), and they like the cuteness of the site,

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nhebb
I'm usually happy to see Stack Overflow in my search results, but I was
reminded of a flaw this morning when I searched for "Manhattan layout
algorithm". I clicked the "Show more results from stackoverflow.com" option.
It turned out that a number of the SO listings appeared only because they all
had the same link in the "Related" sidebar. I don't know if this is a common
problem with other sites that list internal links in sidebars, but I only seem
to notice it in Stack Overflow results.

 _(Unfortunately, I never did find a good description of the algorithm.)_

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hugh4life
Exactly... that "related" sidebar is terrible for getting relevant search
results from Stack Overflow.

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trotsky
Tech Crunch (an AOL property) leading with yet another slam against Yahoo, a
competitor? I'm shocked.

I think I'd probably add TC to a google site ban list if I used google search.
The difference between the AOL way and a content farm seems to be about ~30
minutes of effort per piece.

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efsavage
The yahoo answers that come up in search results may not be as good as those
on stackexchange, but they're generally pretty good if they've ranked high
enough on a google search.

For non-tech questions, I encounter many of the other mee-too q&a sites, and
they usually yield someone (probably scraped from other sites) asking the
question, with no answer. This has been happening with alarming frequency
which to me, puts the ball in google's court.

Fixya.com, for example came up as unanswered questions in enough car/DIY
searches for me recently that as soon as I saw the google blacklist feature I
added them from memory.

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jschuur
Anecdotally, it feels like Yahoo Answers has been more useful for me for non
technical topics. Usually, when I'm googling for the name of a song from a
commercial or trailer, I'll find a Yahoo Answers page with the info.

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Tichy
I just want to find an answer to my question, I don't care so much where.
There are far, far worse places where answers pop up. Like what are these
weird mailing list to web converters, where you can not even see the
conversation thread properly. Or all those private simple machine forums about
the weirdest topics.

I remember when Yahoo! Answers came out it was actually pretty cool. I
participated for a while and had fun. Has it deteriorated so much since? And
why should other answer services fare better?

Btw, there are a lot of really low quality answers on Stack Overflow, too.

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jakegottlieb
Yahoo! answers does not guarantee the integrity of their information. Most of
the time (in my experience), the answers are uninformed and not very
applicable. Are you interested in finding people's opinions when actually you
are looking for a fact/answer? I am sure some of them are useful and maybe
they could secure this by a Hacker News type voting (of course this could be
abused, but...).

~~~
mirkules
It's true that none of yahoo's answers are fact, but I would like to point out
that almost everything on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt
(ahem, wikipedia). That said, your skeptic meter should be higher with yahoo
than with SO but that can also be attributed to the fact that SO deals with
programming (either it works or it doesn't), so bad answers are going to be
discriminated against much more quickly and more correctly.

~~~
jakegottlieb
I agree with that of course.

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jasonkilkner
Joel's really vocal about Yahoo!Answers, which is not fair to Yahoo!Answers.
It's a huge site that caters to a broad base of users: take this question from
a user

Why do universities cost more than community colleges?
[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AukI2XODG.mO_QE...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AukI2XODG.mO_QEq7Gd_y4jj1KIX;_ylv=3?qid=20110312142258AAGwiAp)

It's just a question, picked from the front page.

It's a legitimate inquiry. I don't see a "what do penguins eat?"

More important question is what is Joel Smoking? What are his investors
smoking? To let him make such off the wall assumptions.

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Limes102
I think Yahoo Answers are quite useful. I hate Experts Exchange, however.

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hugh4life
I actually don't mind Yahoo Answers in my search results... I know when to
click there based on what I search for.

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dillon
They both have there good reasons for existence. For example, when I was
taking Biology and Calculus those specific questions could always be answered
with Yahoo. As far as technical questions I think Yahoo has a poor community
to answer them while Stack has a very technical community.

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JasonMoy78
What happened to Joel Spolsky? I saw him at a conference two years ago and he
looks terrible in this video. Not sure if it's the stress or whatever, but I
don't want to see him working himself into a hole... get some time off dude.
It's more important than your startup.

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digamber_kamat
Yahoo answers are useful in many cases. Ask a question about health, sex,
travel and its awesome.

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cpeterso
Yahoo Answers is regularly trolled and the source of some memes, such as "How
is Babby Formed":

<http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-is-babby-formed>

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jscore
Disagreed, seems like Joel is being his usual self and claiming that
competitors products are useless.

I have found a lot of useful answers on yahoo answers on a range and depth of
topics that do not exist within SE sites.

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db42
Though, a ceo should not make a comment like this, this is certainly true for
me.

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drivebyacct2
Someone posts my Chemistry homework on Yahoo Answers and the answers generally
walk all the way through the problems and are very helpful.

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danmarrone
No offense, but Joel Spolsky looks pretty worn out and exhausted. Having a
startup is great, but I suggest to Joel he take some much needed time off.
Your body needs it.

