Yahoo! India Answers blog

I can only imagine how hard it is to be a parent. All you mommies and daddies out there can vouch for that. The daily challenge of enforcing discipline, resisting the urge to spoil your child, dealing with punishment or reward, building self-esteem, knowing that every action (or inaction) is molding your child into the adult he will become. What a huge responsibility!

It was easy to spot the insecurities and fears that surfaced in the questions on our Parenting section. Am I a bad father? Do you think parents should pay for their children’s college education? How do I know if my son is taking drugs? Curfew suggestions for my 20 year-old daughter?

While I’m certainly no expert on the subject, we do have a few experts that write for Yahoo! A recent story that did well was one that suggested 10 ways to be a better parent. While emphasizing that clear communication and the art of listening are the strongholds of good parenting, it points out that having fun with your kids is just as important.

Learning to trust your children, and staying calm when they make mistakes are only some of the trials of parenthood, but they must be mastered nonetheless. The writer mentions a few useful examples of behavior that make for a good starting point on your journey to being a better parent.

Here’s hoping the article helps you refine your parenting style. And don’t forget to take our poll at the end: Which parenting style is more effective? The disciplinary approach, or using love and affection. We want to hear your opinion!

Since its introduction back in 2007, the Community Moderation proved to be extremely effective and accurate: in fact, our stats say that over 94% of deletions by the community are correct and happen within a few minutes since content is reported.

With accurate reports, reliable Answers users increase their trust and gain more influence in removing content directly. On the other hand, people who report inaccurately will see their reputation quickly decrease and will have less power. You can find more information on how the Community Moderation works in our previous posts and in the help section.

Today, we’re introducing a small change to the penalties for content removed by the community. Similar to what happens with the traditional deletions by customer care, abusers will now be deducted 10 points for each question or answer removed by the community. This change will let us align our systems and discourage users from posting content against our community guidelines.

Although very effective, Community Moderation is not perfect and occasional slips may occur. If your question or answer has been removed by the community in error you can have your case reviewed by clicking the appeal link in the email you will receive. A customer care representative will check and, if he agrees, reinstate the content and give points back. However, if the appeal is rejected, the content will remain deleted and you will be deducted 10 extra points. Before appealing we suggest reading our community guidelines and testing your knowledge with our community guidelines quiz: it’s fun and, if you pass, you will earn 20 points!

We strongly believe empowering the community is the right way for keeping Yahoo! Answers healthy and free from abuse and we think this change will have a positive impact. We look forward your feedback and we encourage you to continue reporting the abuses you find on the site: doing so will result in more reputation for you and a better experience for the whole community.

Yahoo! Answers Team

It’s no surprise; mobile is getting bigger and bigger in the online world. Over a year ago, we introduced the mobile-optimized version of Yahoo! Answers, which is proving to be extremely successful amongst users on any device.

To make things easier for Android users, we developed an app that offered the Yahoo! Answers mobile experience outside the browser, available at a single tap. However, we noticed that most of our mobile users still access the site directly from their browsers. As a result, we decided to focus our resources in building better core experiences for Yahoo! Answers across devices. Effective today, we are retiring the app for Android, but don’t worry: you can continue accessing the mobile version of Yahoo! Answers by visiting answers.yahoo.com from your favorite browser.

We’re working hard to deliver new features that will make Yahoo! Answers more relevant and personalized. Stay tuned!

Hello there, everyone! It’s been an eventful few months, and interacting with our community here at Answers has been as exciting as ever.

Adele, beautiful talented Adele, has been in the spotlight for a while now, with her powerful music and incredible voice. Rolling in the Deep and Someone like You are requested for every hour on the radio, are must-haves on every playlist, and can persuade even the most reticent bathroom singer into humming along. Adele has been nominated for 6 awards at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards due to take place in Los Angeles on 12th February, 2012. We checked in with our users on what the odds are of her cleaning out the Grammys.  Our TC Wendigo believes it’s unlikely as sweeps at the Grammys are very rare. But there is also a strong community out there rooting for her and cheering her on. Good luck to you, Adele.  We’re crossing our fingers for you.

2011 has been a year of many losses in Indian music. Very recently, we bid farewell to the Evergreen Dev Anand. Our editors too, felt the loss dearly; there were many outpourings of grief in the office. A memorial page was created to document tributes, and we invited Yahoo! users to join in and pay their respects to the Peter Pan of Bollywood. We received an overwhelming 250+ responses, as readers shared childhood memories of their beloved hero, and how he is inextricable linked to the magic of cinema. We invite you to write your own tribute, as you read the memorials here.

Touching on some burning issues across the country, like FDI in retail, and the new political tinge to the Anna movement, made us realize that there are strong opinions out there, if divided. While most believe FDI will be a positive change, benefiting the consumer by lowering prices and increasing quality, creating more jobs and pulling India out of recession, others believe that FDI is not suitable for a country like India which is still in early stages of development, where population, inflation and illiteracy are high.  The Anna issue also sees divided support. A large section believe that things have to become political before progress can be made, while others who support Team Anna’s ideals against corruption feel the cause will lose validity if given a political agenda. And the debate rages on…

With all the glitz surrounding Dirty Picture and Vidya Balan’s delicious performance as Silk Smitha, we decided to check in with our readers on whether Size Zero was still the in thing. Could the unabashed portrayal of retro sex-appeal change what is popularly perceived as beautiful?  I’m happy to report that nearly all of our 75+ responses rejected the Size Zero definition of beauty. Users spoke instead of healthy bodies, confidence and self-esteem as the components of beauty. Summing it up perfectly in fact, is the Best Answer as chosen by voters, which says size zero is beautiful only to people who like stick insects! Well said!

The month of December is quickly flying by, and we will soon be saying goodbye to 2011. The Yahoo! Year In Review is out, and comes highly recommended as a ton of fun (even if we do say so ourselves!).  To wrap up the year with a little silliness, we invited our users to send in their predictions for big Bollywood weddings in 2012. Who will tie the knot in B-town next year? While Saifu and Kareena ran away with the most number of votes, it appears that many are still rooting for Salman and Katrina! A few others that topped the list were Soha Ali Khan and Kunal Khemu, Vidya Balan and Siddharth Roy Kapoor, and Ritesh and Genlia. Well, dear users, only 2012 will tell how accurate that third eye is, and we look forward to measuring the New Year against your forecasts!

For the first time this October, India observes Domestic Violence Awareness Month, making it an international event.  This year, the focus isn’t just on violence against women, but also on the spreading of awareness of men as victims of domestic violence and harassment. This post elaborates in detail the forms of violence against women, men, children and the elderly.

To gauge our community’s awareness on the issue, we put out a few questions. And although it’s only been one day at the time of this post, I have to say the quality of response is extremely heartening.  Sensitized and informed, opinion is strong and information abounds.

Here are the questions we have up. We’ll be following this post with a round-up of insights from you, our readers, so please feel free to add your own interpretations, your own experiences, and contribute to the conversation as we spread awareness around the issue of domestic violence.

• What constitutes domestic violence? How do I recognize that someone is being abused?
• What is the Bell Bajao campaign?
• Is domestic violence a gender issue?
• What are the legal rights of domestic abuse victims?

Hello, everyone-
Yahoo! Answers will be unavailable Tuesday, September 13th, from 10.30am – 16.30pm IST, due to planned maintenance.

If there is any change to this schedule, we will update the information here.
Meanwhile, please check out these Yahoo! pages and:

• Get the latest on the world of cricket at http://cricket.yahoo.com/
• Want to be updated on the education? Here’s where http://campus.yahoo.com/
• Be updated on the coolest movies at http://in.movies.yahoo.com/
• Join a group at Yahoo! Groups at http://in.groups.yahoo.com/
• Read about the news that matters to you at http://in.news.yahoo.com/
• Can’t get enough of gossip? We have exactly the thing at http://in.omg.yahoo.com/
• We unravel the happenings in finance http://in.finance.yahoo.com/

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Yahoo! Answers Team

With the government all set to discuss the Jan Lokpal Bill in parliament today, we sent out a message into the Yahoo! Universe, to gauge the pulse of our readers. Do they support Anna, or are they against him? Do they believe Anna’s methods are democratic? Will the Lokpal bill change corruption at all, or will we just be creating another monster in the public sphere?

Reflecting the strength of the movement on the ground, our readers share their opinions, sharp and insightful, as they engage in conversation with the community.

While the majority seem to support Anna’s cause, seeing him as a “one man institution against corruption” taking a stance against the government’s view that people in power are above the law, there are a few dissenting voices. Confused about how a group with a genuine cause can resort to black-mailing the government, there is an opinion that Team Anna detracts from the cause, with the means they have employed to reach their end – dictating terms to an elected house.

Will the bill bring any sort of change? Verdict remains divided. While it appears that the cancer of Indian corruption is beyond rescue, there remains a sliver of hope; it is a step in the right direction. Recalling the skepticism that the RTI faced not so long ago, it is without question a tool that has blown the lid off several scams. Another reader rightly points out that India has no deficit of laws to control corruption, it has just shown abysmal effort at implementing them. Therefore the creation of another law will merely be superfluous, adding to the corrupt workforce, and to the list of laws that are a travesty of justice. Instead, if some of this focus was diverted into correcting our judiciary methods – expediting legal processes, cutting down red-tape, and increasing accountability to higher courts, we would have a far more efficient, effective system on our hands; one that the people would be less dissatisfied with. Reader Meenakshi agrees that it is indeed the Judiciary that has failed us, but believes that the Lokpal bill will never be implemented, as it amounts to signing a political death warrant.

There seems to be lack of consensus regarding whether Anna stands for democracy or not. Mukesch Kaley is of the opinion that Anna’s methods make it quite clear that he is against democracy. However there is a segment of our audience that believe he is in fact, the only man out there fighting for the survival of real democracy; a government for the people, by the people and of the people, not a farcical shadow of the idea, that allows the corrupt to stay in power, to evade justice, and take the country for a ride.

While it may be that the Lokpal is not nearly enough to root out corruption, it has certainly come at a time where it has found an audience, nay, an uprising, that demands to be heard. And while the bill goes to parliament, a country watches, unblinking.

Adding to the storm of debate around the issue of fairness creams, undertones of racism and an obsession that spans the globe, two recent incidents have stoked the fires again.

An ad by a global brand in personal care, owned by Unilever, has sparked debate on whether the brand is implying that darker skin is less desirable. And Naomi Campbell’s outrage at being compared to a chocolate bar has led to talk of Cadbury’s Bliss ad campaign being racist.

We asked our community at Yahoo! Answers to share their thoughts, and we got some interesting feedback.

Why are fairness creams so popular?

While Jake believes it stems from the psychology of Gori, another user believes it is the ads that define for society, what beauty means.

Do fairness creams promote racism?

In lighter vein, one user disagrees – fairness creams try to kick away racism just by making everyone fair. Something to think about?

Where does the fair-skinned prejudice stem from? Are we born with it, or does society and mass media seed it?

Some great contributions tracing racism and prejudice back to society, family, slave-trade and colonialism.

And the bottom-line –

Do fair skinned people get more interview calls, more dates, more spotlight than dusky people?

Tell us your experiences, share your thoughts, be part of the community.

Yahoo! Answers is back; up and running!

We were down for a planned maintenance exercise, which has been completed, and we are open for business again.

Thanks for your co-operation during this time.

We look forward to you frequenting the site, active participation and continued patronage.

If you were inconvenienced, we’d like to apologize.

Yahoo! Answers Team