Any ideas how Yedda could stop or at least limit ...

I feel your frustration and that is why I am so seldom on here any more. Since AOL bought Yedda the problems, questions and frequency of the same questions have become mind boggling. If they stopped using so many oddball sites to generate questions that may be a big help.

I wish it was like the old days and when it really felt like a family and where your answers really could help someone.

By the way it was nice to see your question and to see that you are still around.

Good luck and best wishes,

Tip

I think I would like to address the part you don't like about misspelled...some people can't spell. Do you think that you are above them? Perhaps they have a learning disability or maybe just hit the wrong key on keyboard? Mindless questions...maybe they are important to THEM. Nobody said you have to answer them. And this, to you, is corrupt?

Yedda is about questions and answers. Just like about giving and taking. When either of the two is compromised the whole thing doesn't work.

If someone doesn't care to spell correctly or formulate his/ her question according to the conventions of grammar this is not about questions and answers anymore but rather about self expression. There's twitter for that purpose. Mind you, I am not talking about accidental typos or questions which sound stupid. I am talking about piles of misspelled words which make utterly no sense.

Yedda is literally clogged with such. The users eager to help can hardly find an interesting question to answer. The end result is that those potentially having the answers become less motivated to browse Yedda and those having "real" questions do not see enough replies or do not see replies at all. Then they also become less motivated to use Yedda. Which is all a pity because Yedda used to be great...

Yedda needs more moderators to screen this stuff out before it joins the general feed.  Tiptopmanager used to be one of the premier answerers here, and when he feels frustrated you know that something is wrong.  These partner sites and AOL are the source of all this drek, and they never screen their input at all.  Many sites seem to advertise this as their "contact us" and try to get free customer service from us for their products/sites (plus royalties from Yedda for doing it).

   drabsv, have you backtracked the tab on a Web4Health question?  They advertise "a team of experts selected by the Commission of the European Communities" on the page you submit your question on.  If you dig into their site pages deep, you find the disclaimer that their experts "may" answer your questions but they are really answered by the Yedda community.  but not on the front page.  There we are experts in psychology and medicine.

   And the celebrity fan mail.  Why is that stuff coming here?  I can understand people wanting us to do their work and all their web searches for them for free, that is just human greed and laziness.  But fan mail?  Do they really want us to pretend to be these people?

    Yedda is trying to be too many things to too many people.  Maybe they should have a button for choices   1) I want a real answer or 2) I want someone to just agree with me or 3) I'm looking for a sucker.  Then we could pick the feed we want to see.   I also would like a "share a laugh with a friend about this question" link for the really bizarre ones.

   Is it springtime in Bulgaria yet?

   So, what do you want to do about this problem?  Beyond more moderators either at the partner sites or Yedda I don't really have any ideas.  Language recognition programs to screen out stuff probably wouldn't be practical since not everything is in English.

   I'm pretty sure that most the quetions that bother you come from the U.S.  I guess I should explain that our educational system, and schools in general have gone downhill in recent generations.  Our literacy rate has fallen significantly.  I quit looking when it dropped below 70% years ago.  A lot of the children (hundreds of thousands at least) are almost feral as far as being socialized into mainstream culture and mores.  The majority of questions on Yedda are written at a pretty high level for us in the US.  A lot of colleges now require a writing test to graduate to spare themselves the embarassment of graduating illiterates, but I think they may be in the  minority.

   What we can do about this, I don't have a clue.  Maybe we could have a literacy test in order to post a question, but I don't think this site would be cool with that.  It does seem more and more that a spin-off site should be created for the educated/intellectuals to hang around in, the way Yedda seemed a long time ago, but this isn't right either.

   If we had moderators/someone who reads every question on behalf of the site they could rank the questions as they are asked and we could view feeds that block certain rankings.  i.e.  elementary level, social level, college level, expert level.  Anything not written as a clear question could be marked and avoided.

   But again, this all boils down to Yedda having a staff paying attention to what is being posted as it is posted, or being the gateway to allow it to be posted.  I understand the philosophy of being hands off and allowing everybody to say what they want, but that makes it really hard to surf for relevant or real questions or answers.

It could be that some of the posts with the misspelled words are from people who do not speak English that well or people who are not well educated but want and need answers. Personally I move away if something offends me or seems nonsensical or put up to exploit the good folks on Yedda.

It is not that difficult to weed out the stinkers and those who want to gossip or hurt people or the site in general. I really enjoy Yedda and I have found when some questions terribly misspelled they were sincere and I answered. I would not like to prohibit anyone from coming to Yedda, I believe we have the free choice to move away from things distasteful to us and I have found there are threads where even the most popular get into fantasy and computer foreplay. So it is just people being people.

My humble opinion.

Hi all.   Thanks for the invitation Donna!  I have been reading posts like yours, drabsv, ever since I first came to Yedda over a year ago!  This really is such an irritation for people who have the ability to read and write, be thoughtful and helpful... that's why most of us are here in the first place, to try to be helpful, but how can we be when we can't completely understand a persons question, or even some of their answers?!  You all have brought up great points of what the problem, or problems could be... a good solution would be for (spell check) to work for another thing! It doesn't work for me on my computer, not on Yedda anyway.

For a while I thought it was a conspiracy.. for the guys manning the switch to see how stupid we were!.. Maybe get a laugh or two.  But now it really is getting out of hand. And like some of you have said, causing Yedda to lose it's appeal.

I say let's see if we can get Yedda to do something about getting their Spell-Check working. I'm sure that not only us, but a lot of people who can't spell would appreciate it too.

See you all around Yedda!

I have a background in journalism and copy editing - it makes my flesh crawl to see some of the spelling and grammar errors that abound on Yedda.

That being said, I find it has helped me learn to curb my natural impulse to correct people (without being asked), which means it has also helped me learn tact and patience (qualities I am NOT known for).

I agree that many of the 'questions' are not, in fact, questions. At best, they are statements; at worst, disjointed phrases. Oftentimes I find that (after a bit of puzzling) I can scope out the gist of what they're asking, but I also find that a good way to deal with those types of 'questions' is to simply post a reply asking for clarification.

I didn't realise AOL had bought Yedda, and that might have something to do with its demise. I agree though; there are a curiously large number of ill-formed questions, or questions that aren't questions at all. Does anyone here think Yahoo Answers is any better?