The newly launched Yahoo! Answers makes a retributive slap at the long-established Google Answers, while reinforcing Yahoo!'s commitment to community. Google Answers, one of Google's least-known services, offers professionaly researched solutions to all sort of queries, using a bidding system to determine how much the customer will pay the researcher. All queries and answers are archived in a directory for informative browsing. The service really should be better publicized, because it contains a treasure chest of knowledge. One of the coolest features of Google Answers is that anybody can chip in an answer, and the amateur answers sometimes give the professional answers a run for their money.

Yahoo! takes a pure grass-roots approach in Yahoo! Answers. No money, no professionals. It's all about community and the intelligence of a mob. Yahoo! Answers is like Google Answers mashed up with Wikipedia. As in Google, questions and answers are archived. Unlike Google Answers, the cost-free environment at Yahoo! opens the door to questions like "how do u no if someone loves you?" (Actually, the answers aren't bad, and the question was only 20 minutes old when I saw it.)

Various Yahoo!-ish bells and whistles are woven into Yahoo! Answers, including question watch lists, per-question RSS, and integration with My Web 2.0.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Yahoo! Answers is the point system that both rewards and limits participation. When you first take action in the program (posting a question, answering a question, or voting for an answer), a short registration page ensues on which you select your identity (info taken from your Yahoo! ID profile and your 360 page if you have one). With that initial sign-in completed, you are awarded 100 points. You then accrue points with each question posted, answered, voted upon, and even each time you log into Yahoo! Answers. The bonanza (10 points) occurs when an answer of yours is selected as the best answer. All this encourages frequent visits, even though the points are mostly worthless. Interestingly, Yahoo! constrains the amount you can use Yahoo! Answers depending on your point total. You may take only 10 actions per day until you attain 250 points, at which level you may take 20 actions per day. So it goes until you reach 5,000 points (yikes), at which level you may participate without limit.

At first glance the point system seems to work against itself. Clearly, it is designed to motivate joining in, but at the same time thwarts a high level of enthusiasm. But I think the point distribution is meant to reward high-quality participation, and grease the way for the best answerers to gain high levels of access. It's an elegant solution to the built-in spam issue, and one that attempts to obviate the need for human monitoring. The ideal participant who posts "best" answers all the time will reach a new level of access every 1-2 days. Graffiti artists will take much longer, and presumably fade back in exhaustion. Without being infallible or too discouraging, the point system massages the site towards high quality.