July 16, 2009
clusterflock interviews clusterflock, #1 — updated, with answer
We have kicked around the idea for a long time of using the site to interview each other in some way. I was supposed to set something up with Andrew and totally dropped the ball. I think part of the problem was we were being too formal. I propose a simple formula: when something interesting occurs to someone that involves another flocker (or someone in some way affiliated with the site), make it a post.
So, without further ado:
Q. Kelsey, I’m curious about your experience(s) with Yahoo! Answers. You mentioned your frustration with the site a few times in comments and I was wondering if you would tell us what it was like working on that project. What it’s limitations were. What you saw as its potential. And how, presumably, it fell short. (As well as any other anecdotes you would care to share.)
A. My case against Yahoo! Answers is dated. For those who are unaware, I worked at Yahoo! from June 2005 to late 2007. The work itself was corporate — simple, predictable, complete with gym membership. It was my first job out of college and, when I showed up, I was as bright-eyed and idealistic as they come. But in order to work there, I left my apartment at seven and rarely returned before eight. After 2.5 years of a 4-6 hour daily commute, I now know how to lose myself. Commuting ever so slowly siphons away my laughter.
Toward the end of 2005, the Yahoo! mainland had taken notice of a successful product built by Y! Korea. Users were answering other users’ questions …effectively. These weren’t just questions about the weather (wink), but questions that require subjective, personal experience. From what we could see, users were happy to help because every answer awarded points — points that could be used to buy hats for your avatar and throw fireballs at your friends’. We thought, Heck! We can do that. We can do it better! What no one acknowledged, as we sat in a windowless conference room debating over what to name our own version of this, was that in order to have an account with Y! Korea, the equivalent to a social security number is required.
So we plodded on. We built an identical product, we tested it in small numbers, and then we released it under a spotlight of glory that only the Yahoo! mainland could produce. It truly seemed to be working — users were asking grammatically correct and spell-checked questions, other users were answering thoughtfully and respectfully.
I honestly haven’t looked around answers.yahoo.com in three years. So I don’t know what, if anything, has changed since I moved over to Y! Local in the summer of 2006. My bitterness stems from the number of nights I worked until three, sometimes four in the morning, as a glorified spam filter.* Points are a dangerous commodity in an online community. Flickr’s Explore page and Twitter’s trending topics don’t even use points but developers are coding away at the ultimate abuse-detector and eliminator. I could write for days about the particular point system enacted by Y! Answers, and days more about their reluctance to change, but I won’t. I won’t even say, Don’t use points. I’ll just say you should be careful if you do.
As our numbers grew exponentially, the abuse suffocated the site. We’d suspend the spammers, but they’d just create a new account. And here lies the rub. When Y! Korea’s knowledge search (I forget its official name) suspended bad actors, those users were incapable of returning. They would write long, apologetic letters to the community management team begging for a second chance. If only we had that kind of power.
I’ve never been one to join virtual games, like Second Life — if you think it counts, then Foursquare only recently took my gamers’ virginity. So it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me… but those users were begging for their avatars. They loved accruing points, for little else than changing their avatars’ fashion. When I worked for Y! Answers, the points our users were earning meant nothing and did nothing. There was a leaderboard, but no real- or virtual-world advantage was won by being at the top of it. Abusers could easily rise to the top, giving the community’s thoughtful leaders nothing for their efforts.
Moderation was also a mess, but less important to discuss now. In the last three years, the Internet has learned enough about delegating moderation and flagging abuse.
So, those were its limitations in my mind. Its potential was little more than what the folks at Vark and even, in many ways, Mechanical Turk are trying to accomplish. I recently read an article about Facebook’s plans for changing the nature of search. Like Y! Answers, Google Answers, and every other attempt at leveraging humans to spread a helpful layer of subjectivity to the Internet, Facebook believes its profile data will redefine the way we search.
Want to see what some anonymous schmuck thought about the Battlestar Galactica finale? Check out Google. Want to see what your friends had to say? Try Facebook Search.
All this being said, I truly enjoyed the people I worked with while I was there. Sure, the product was a mess that I didn’t have enough power to change, but my fellow coworkers drowning in abuse made it possible to laugh every once in a while. Imagine spending every day, all day, reading IN ALL CAPS with varius mispellings and no punctuation ever at all and most of the hour phrases and grammar make no sense because abuse is written by folks who can’t read good and wanna learn to do other stuff good too.
* My idealism motivated me, but the underlying hope that I could earn respect for ‘giving my all’ powered me through. Instead, all those nights led up to a promotion from the director of Y! Answers and a manager who told him to revoke it on account of my age — I mean, experience.
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Great approach.
gracias.
Hello! Deron, thank you for asking. I’m chuffed.
I just unearthed the (gag) Powerpoint I presented to the director of Y! Answers a few months after its conception. Most of the points I’ll make here exist in that change-now-or-be-consumed-by-spam, violaceous deck.
Give me a few hours. (It’s a work day after all.)
absotutely!
My case against Yahoo! Answers is dated. For those who are unaware, I worked at at Yahoo! from June 2005 to late 2007. The work itself was corporate — simple, predictable, complete with gym membership. It was my first job out of college and, when I showed up, I was as bright-eyed and idealistic as they come. But in order to work there, I left my apartment at seven and rarely returned before eight. After 2.5 years of a 4-6 hour daily commute, I now know how to lose myself. Commuting ever so slowly siphons away my laughter.
Toward the end of 2005, the Yahoo! mainland had taken notice of a successful product built by Y! Korea. Users were answering other users’ questions …effectively. These weren’t just questions about the weather (wink), but questions that require subjective, personal experience. From what we could see, users were happy to help because every answer awarded points — points that could be used to buy hats for your avatar and throw fireballs at your friends’. We thought, Heck! We can do that. We can do it better! What no one acknowledged, as we sat in a windowless conference room debating over what to name our own version of this, was that in order to have an account with Y! Korea, the equivalent to a social security number is required.
So we plodded on. We built an identical product, we tested it in small numbers, and then we released it under a spotlight of glory that only the Yahoo! mainland could produce. It truly seemed to be working — users were asking grammatically correct and spell-checked questions, other users were answering thoughtfully and respectfully.
I honestly haven’t looked around answers.yahoo.com in three years. So I don’t know what, if anything, has changed since I moved over to Y! Local in the summer of 2006. My bitterness stems from the number of nights I worked until three, sometimes four in the morning, as a glorified spam filter.* Points are a dangerous commodity in an online community. Flickr’s Explore page and Twitter’s trending topics don’t even use points but developers are coding away at the ultimate abuse-detector and eliminator. I could write for days about the particular point system enacted by Y! Answers, and days more about their reluctance to change, but I won’t. I won’t even say, Don’t use points. I’ll just say you should be careful if you do.
As our numbers grew exponentially, the abuse suffocated the site. We’d suspend the spammers, but they’d just create a new account. And here lies the rub. When Y! Korea’s knowledge search (I forget its official name) suspended bad actors, those users were incapable of returning. They would write long, apologetic letters to the community management team begging for a second chance. If only we had that kind of power.
I’ve never been one to join virtual games, like Second Life — if you think it counts, then Foursquare only recently took my gamers’ virginity. So it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me… but those users were begging for their avatars. They loved accruing points, for little else than changing their avatars’ fashion. When I worked for Y! Answers, the points our users were earning meant nothing and did nothing. There was a leaderboard, but no real- or virtual-world advantage was won by being at the top of it. Abusers could easily rise to the top, giving the community’s thoughtful leaders nothing for their efforts.
Moderation was also a mess, but less important to discuss now. In the last three years, the Internet has learned enough about delegating moderation and flagging abuse.
So, those were its limitations in my mind. Its potential was little more than what the folks at Vark and even, in many ways, Mechanical Turk are trying to accomplish. I recently read an article about Facebook’s plans for changing the nature of search. Like Y! Answers, Google Answers, and every other attempt at leveraging humans to spread a helpful layer of subjectivity to the Internet, Facebook believes its profile data will redefine the way we search.
All this being said, I truly enjoyed the people I worked with while I was there. Sure, the product was a mess that I didn’t have enough power to change, but my fellow coworkers drowning in abuse made it possible to laugh every once in a while. Imagine spending every day, all day, reading IN ALL CAPS with varius mispellings and no punctuation ever at all and most of the hour phrases and grammar make no sense because abuse is written by folks who can’t read good and wanna learn to do other stuff good too.
* My idealism motivated me, but the underlying hope that I could earn respect for ‘giving my all’ powered me through. Instead, all those nights led up to a promotion from the director of Y! Answers and a manager who told him to revoke it on account of my age — I mean, experience.
I think that it’s interesting to see the US versions of overseas successful projects. American Idol and game shows probably being the major exceptions. The US Internet social spectrum is unlike any other. It would be unwise to think that what proves popular and spam-free from Asia will prove the same here. I’m really happy you shared the back-end of Yahoo Answers. I always wondered who would ever think of such a model which seems to be waiting for abuse.