Yahoo Answers Zaps Spam in a Snap

Filed in Social Media by Matt McGee on October 25, 2007 2 Comments

Within the last couple months, Yahoo Answers changed how moderation is done on the site. I wrote about the new emphasis on “trusted reporters” and the promise to reply to spam reports more quickly.

That was a month or so ago, and since then I’ve been using the site and reporting crap when I see it. Like today, when I found some spam and decided to see how the new system is working. Here’s the question I found:

Yahoo Answers #1

I took that screenshot when I reported it as spam, which was at 4:00 pm PT (the start of my daily reading hour). I just checked the URL again tonight at about 8:45 pm, and here’s what I found:

Yahoo Answers #2

Less than five hours and the junk is gone. I have no clue if I’m a “trusted reporter”, but regardless, given the sheer volume of questions being posted on Yahoo Answers every day, I think a sub-5-hour action on a spam report is pretty impressive. Well done, Yahoo Answers.

Comments (2)

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  1. davidmihm says:

    That’s pretty encouraging, Matt. If only the engines replied to spam reports about sites in their REGULAR results just as quickly… 🙂

  2. That is impressive. It must be because they like you 🙂

    I’m with David in wishing other arms of the engines worked that fast — I’d settle for it being twice as slow, since 10 hours is an improvement on waiting for days.

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