Yahoo shutting down Message Boards and other services | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo shutting down Message Boards and other services

ycorpblog.com

44 pointshboon52 comments

Now if they could shut down Yahoo! Answers so that its useless Q/As stop showing up in Google results that would be perfect.

I just use a google extension to block those from my search result.

Google search has a built-in tool for filtering sites out of your results. I haven't seen an experts exchange result in years. Just remove answers from your search results.

... no it doesn't.

It once did, briefly. Lasted about six months if I recall correctly, then was deprecated.

Thanks. I'm surprised. Experts exchange hasn't come up since. Guess that was the only site I ever wanted to blacklist.

I've been seeing expertsexchange again. That's how I discovered the google blacklist had disappeared.

There was as chrome extension, but google removed it. Then it was built into google, and they removed that too.

They moved it into Personal Blocklist, a Chrome extension by Google. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...

Yahoo answers has been amazingly useful to me a number of times.

No they shouldn't. They should revamp it, remove all the crap content / spam users. If they clean it out and start highlighting the good stuff that they have in there, Answers could be very useful.

They should keep it as a honeypot for people that you don't want offering their advice through other channels. It's kind of like a quarantine right now, which is convenient.

Cleaning up the services of Yahoo! as a CEO must feel like going through your parents' stuff in a dusty, derelict attic.

Some of the earliest mainstream general discussion of REST took place in the still-active "rest-discuss" board going back to 2002. I hope that history is preserved.

What about Yahoo! Answers? Asking for a friend.

I hope they do close it - its useless unless you are dredging for comedy.

Citation for the downvoters: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110910190628AA...

It maybe useless to you or me, but its very much active and used by a lot of people. I think this is one of the few Yahoo Services that organically grew over time and started having a name for itself.

I do think there is plenty of room to make it much much better. It looks the same for as long as I can remember.

Would be driving tons of traffic to yahoo, it has great SEO on all kinds of questions. If anything they should double down on it and try and attract higher quality answers. Stack exchange is showing there is a pretty big opportunity in questions and answers.

I'm guessing it is sticking around. The text in the Yahoo Message Board section says:

"We also encourage you to ask and answer questions on Yahoo! Answers, and discuss issues in the comments section on Yahoo! News."

However, it looks like the avatar images that everyone is used to will disappear, since Yahoo is getting rid of them generally.

I haven't worked at Yahoo in years, but I'd be very surprised if they shut down Answers. It was the most successful new product launch they had in a very long time, and it looks like it's still thriving today (take a look at the Answers homepage - there are several new questions being posted per minute!)

Compare to the products mentioned in the blog post, most if which I hadn't even heard of. Why would Yahoo continue to run a message board product when they also have the much more popular Yahoo Groups?

it says specifically in the article that it is staying

I'm confused from the announcement - is that Yahoo Groups as well?

The release doesn't mention Yahoo! Groups.

Ah, I guess I combined them too? Which one is used for mailing lists like FreeCycle?

Considering that Yahoo has products ranging all the way from horoscopes to web hosting — this does not feel enough.

Yahoo is a content company, no matter what label she gives them now. They need content.

What content does yahoo have?

Other than their "Answers"-garbage polluting my search results I don't think I have been in contact with any yahoo property for about 10 years...

licensed or not they have a News section, finance, weather, travel, sports, shopping, gossip, etc.

You never clean the attic, garage or basement in a day.

I think this is well overdue, if you go out and look at the content on these boards it is basically people trying to sell credit card dumps, and random spam.. Most folks have moved on to the major social networks.

Interesting: they are shutting down the Blackberry app. Either the app was terrible and never used, or they see Blackberry as a dying platform.

Or the new WebKit browser in the recent versions of Blackberry OS mean that it's not as required as it used to be.

The yahoo! App on android is simply an embedded browser widget and only provides one actual feature. You can share the current URL on Facebook. Confounding how they could release an app that is both pointless for the user but beneficial to a competitior.

I'm surprised they only discontinued the blackberry version.

The BlackBerry the app was written for _is_ a dying platform: BlackBerry 10 has zero compatibility with the original BlackBerry OS's apps.

The biggest wrong about Yahoo is that they don't have a core business anymore, a one that earns them money, like google search is for google.

The Google's core business is advertising.

I believe its search, without search, they would not have anyone to watch their adverts.

Yahoo is in the same business Google is--advertising--and is profitable.

What a horrible sounding url

This is great. The lesser the product line the more one can focus.

Yep. It's about time they shed some some of this Geocities era junk.

you are advocating the destruction of historic content, not unlike suggesting that a library should just burn its oldest books. there were tons of fantastic websites on Geocities.

good. There is nothing I hate more than having to sign in to yahoo for something such as a support group for a bit of software or freecycle. Its just horrid from end to end.

Yahoo has a message board?

Who at Yahoo decided that a 12px font size was readable? Maybe start by firing that person?

http://hn.explodie.org/writings/stop-using-small-font-size.h...

http://contrastrebellion.com/

In case you're too young to remember, 12px was the standard for a very long time.

It's only in the last 2-3yrs that font-sizes have grown.

I'm sure that if the website was redesigned today, a larger font would be implemented.

> 12px was the standard for a very long time.

Yeah, errrr....there is no "standard" on the web. Make your font sizes readable. It's really not hard.

Standard (Adjective): Used or accepted as normal or average.

12px was very readable for a very long time. FYI, screen resolutions weren't always as good as they are now.

In fact, if you go further back in time, many "webmasters" (what we called ourselves because you young'uns decided you were "engineers" of usability) even gasp used 11px. Oh the days of the CRT... good times... good times.

Dinosaur (Noun): A person or thing that is outdated or has become obsolete because of failure to adapt to changing circumstances.

I'm not sure why you think I'm a "young'un" but, please get over yourself, "old timer."

So because 12px font was super readable on 640x480 CRT on Win95, we should continue to use that and never update our blogs?

Are you seriously trying to defend shitty readability in 2013? What a weirdo.

> So because 12px font was super readable on 640x480 CRT on Win95, we should continue to use that and never update our blogs?

Nope.

> Are you seriously trying to defend shitty readability in 2013?

Nope, not as far as I can tell. Do read my original post.

In case you're too young to understand why I wrote... I was explaining a possible reason why the site has the font-size it currently has. I went on to say that I'm sure that were the site redesigned today, it would have a larger font... JUST LIKE ALL THE WEBSITES YOU LIKE THAT HAVE 16px FONTS... YES, THEY PROBABLY HAD 12 or 13px FONTS IN THEIR PREVIOUS ITERATIONS.

Funny to see how this comment is downvoted and loses its contrast as a result ;)

Yep, not only that but Hacker News is used as an example on Contrast Rebellion: http://contrastrebellion.com/public/images/page2-img4.jpg

We don't do it to look cool. We know low contrast is less readable, and we use it to discourage self-posts.

Sure, I get the reason. I was using the example to relate to parent's comment.

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