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A Librarian's Worst NightmareYahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong.

By Jacob Leibenluft
Posted Friday, Dec. 7, 2007, at 4:30 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.

When it does battle on the Web, Google rarely loses. Last year's closure of Google Answers, however, marked a rare setback for the search giant. An even bigger shock is that Yahoo! succeeded where Google failed. Yahoo! Answers—a site where anyone can post a question in plain English, including queries that can't be answered by a traditional search engine—now draws 120 million users worldwide, according to Yahoo!'s internal stats. The site has compiled 400 million answers, all searchable in its archives. According to the Web tracking company Hitwise, Yahoo! Answers is the second-most-visited education/reference site on the Internet after Wikipedia.

The blockbuster success of Yahoo! Answers is all the more surprising once you spend a few days using the site. While Answers is a valuable window into how people look for information online, it looks like a complete disaster as a traditional reference tool. It encourages bad research habits, rewards people who post things that aren't true, and frequently labels factual errors as correct information. It's every middle-school teacher's worst nightmare about the Web.

The site's home page, which offers a real-time snapshot of the dozens of questions posted every minute, provides a good sense of users' favorite topics: relationships, computers, homework, pregnancy. These queries reveal why something like Yahoo! Answers might draw so many visitors. The questions—"Why does the stomach make funny noises when it's hungry?" and "How do stoplights sense a car?" for instance—are difficult to answer with a traditional Web search. If you're looking for advice on your new haircut or help on the third question on your precalculus problem set, Yahoo! Answers might be your best option. Most strikingly, Answers draws a large enough crowd that you're likely to get an answer almost instantaneously. Post a semicoherent question and the responses will come within minutes, if not seconds.

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.

Take a popular question asking about common customs and beliefs among Native Americans. In theory, this is the kind of query Yahoo! Answers is made for. It's more easily asked in the form of a complete sentence rather than in a series of search terms, and it has a factual answer some users might know.

How did Yahoo! Answers do? On the plus side, the question received an impressive 97 different answers, including a few knowledgeable responses and helpful references. But several of the postings were misleading, confused, or just plain wrong. If you started off uncertain, it's hard to imagine you would read the responses and feel any more confident. To top it off, the answer eventually chosen as the "best" was, enigmatically, "American pie."

In some academic areas—physics is one I've noticed—the Answers community consistently does an impressive job of providing accurate answers and a clear explanation of how to get them. But in other disciplines, the site's record as an educational tool is, to put it charitably, unreliable. A recent question about dual citizenship attracted 12 answers in just two hours; some of the responses were nearly accurate, many partially true, and others entirely false ("yes it is true they outlawed dual citizenship in 2001 due to people going to canada and the uk for free health care while they were not paying taxes in that country"). Another thread on the relationship between Iran, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden offered a few insightful responses about Sunni-Shiite politics surrounded by enough noise—"No one really cares except for people like yourself!"—to confuse or annoy anyone who might pose the question earnestly.

Some people might look at this mixed record and think that Yahoo! Answers is just like Wikipedia. But the differences between the two sites say a lot—about why Wikipedia has been such a success, why the Web's leading reference site is so hard to replicate, and how Yahoo! Answers has become so popular despite its flaws.

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Jacob Leibenluft is a writer from Washington, D.C.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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Notes from the Fray Editor

"Database is one word, as is moron" – ah yes, the legendary politeness of the Fray: we hope the sad lament from iheartbusterk, below, doesn't get slammed. "The only greater cesspool on the Internet is Youtube comments" said another poster, speaking of Yahoo Answers obviously. There was a lot of discussion of Wikipedia; and several librarians came in to talk about their reaction to Answers, see below. Enilorac recommended www.ipl.org as a useful resource. Melvyl used the article as the starting point for a fascinating look at modern times: "Nothing is less stable in America than the forms and social routines through which information is transmitted, shared, stored, remembered and forgotten." Perhaps the most reasoned comment on Yahoo Answers came from Bill Johnston: "Probably, regarding it as a reference source is incorrect. Its basically a specialized type of discussion board or chat group."

Comments from the Fray

I am not a fan of Yahoo answers at all. I've asked a few questions about finer points of etiquette and have received at least one incredibly rude response for each question. At least when I search on Wikipedia, I don't have to worry about my search for information being ridiculed.

--iheartbusterk

(To reply, click here)

The one good thing, compared to Wikipedia, is that if you produce a well-researched, well-sourced answer that fully resolves the asker's question (and IF it is selected as the best answer), then that answer will be in the database, never to be modified by others, and will be available to anyone wanting an answer to the same query months from now. You never have to worry about it being vandalized or subtly (but significantly) altered while others aren't watching. However, the short interval in which questions can be answered--and the sock-puppet-based voting procedure--undermines this process.

--jwestmich

(To reply, click here)

I'm no fan of Yahoo Answers (it drives me nuts to see bad answers selected by the original poster as the best) but there are librarians who have banded together to "slam the boards"--go out, answer questions correctly, and sign the responses as librarians. They believe that it's the responsibility of librarians to go where the users are and improve the quality of the information circulated there. Although I'm not involved, as a librarian I do see it as a more valid response than dismissing the services as "a nightmare." (Of course, I haven't actually heard any librarians do that.)

--bradamant

(To reply, click here)

(12/11)