Yahoo! Answers

Hello again! I know I haven't been posting very much in the past weeks, but I've been conducting an experiment with Yahoo! Answers and that's been keeping me busy.

A little while ago, there was a call to librarians to storm the virtual beaches of Yahoo! Answers and do what we do best. Intrigued, I logged on with my extremely old Yahoo! account and poked around. It was terrible. All these little teenagers worrying about boys that are too old for them, acne and cheating on homework. Pathetic women talking about how their boyfriends/husbands were complete losers, but still didn't know what to do about them. I was turned off immediately and abandoned my attempt to partake in this nationwide question answering session.

However, for some reason that escapes me, I got back into it last week. There's still all the ridiculous questions mentioned above, but I decided to look past these and even answer one. Before I knew it, I was like an addict looking for my next fix. I answered question after question, gaining points and working toward my goal: to become a Level 2 member so I could give the "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" to others' answers.

Behold, I reached my goal this afternoon. This community is very interesting, here's some of my observations:

• I answered a question about how global warming effects us on a daily basis and made a comment that asked "Who are you people?" to all those that said, "There's no such thing as global warming." Even though I provided a good, clear answer, with a link to a National Geographic article, I was given multiple "Thumbs Down," probably for my "Who are you people?" blast. Anyway, looking through other similar questions I found that there are MANY global warming deniers trolling the Yahoo! Answers atmosphere. Weird.
• This is a politically charged place. I definitely don't want to get caught up in a political online crap storm, so I craft my answers very carefully and neutrally. Yet, those people are fierce. They freak out and yell at each other and, well, they're conservatives for the most part. Anyone that answers with a liberal slant get slapped with many, many "Thumbs Downs."
• Don't screw around with the Harry Potter fans. Talk junk about their books and they, too, will "Thumbs Down" you to death.