We asked, "What's better to use at the grocery store--paper or plastic?" Within 10 minutes, we received 18 answers, more than triple the number of replies received for the same question posted with Windows Live QnA. However, within a day, we had received roughly the same number of replies from both services. Most of the other Yahoo users' answers were curt and subjective, while several were better thought out. We received more helpful replies with objective, how-to questions, such as how to clean tile cement off of silver jewelry.
Support for Yahoo Answers comes in the form of a user forum and a well-organized, searchable knowledge base, but no e-mail help is available. The self-policing community lets you report bad behavior. Because Yahoo has released the underlying code of Answers to the public, you can check out potential plug-ins from third parties at gallery.yahoo.com.
If you don't want to waste time filtering out responses from amateurs, you can shell out $2.50 to ask a question at Google Answers. If you prefer to remain anonymous, try the free Wondir. Overall, however, we found Yahoo Answers to be a well-organized and simple service that can deliver helpful assistance from among its tens of millions of users--as long as you choose your subjects wisely.
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