Yahoo! Answers
Yahoo! Answers | |
URL | https://answers.yahoo.com/ |
Status | Closing |
Archiving status | In progress.../Upcoming... |
Archiving type | Unknown |
Project source | yahooanswers-grab |
Project tracker | yahooanswers |
IRC channel | #noanswers (on hackint) |
Yahoo! Answers is currently the biggest Q&A site on the internet. It is unlikely to go down soon, but given Yahoo!'s record of deleting sites (Yahoo! Messages, Ask Yahoo!), one would be better off using Answers.com or another Q&A site.
In July 2016, Yahoo! has been acquired by Verizon. Rumour has it that Answers might be closed as a consequence. So ArchiveTeam decided to download it. This effort stopped in July 2017 for unknown reasons.
In April 2021, Yahoo! announced that Answers would go read-only on 2021-04-20 and be shut down entirely on 2021-05-04.[1]
2021 Archival attempt
The code is still being written for this. Sit tight and check the IRC channel for updates.
Once it's ready, you should be able to use the ArchiveTeam Warrior to help out!
2016/2017 Archival attempt
Discovery
[1] and [2] are allegedly the oldest accounts on the site.
User:PurpleSymphony did a discovery in July–August 2016, on which the ArchiveTeam project is based.
How can I help?
(This information may be outdated as it is from the 2016/2017 archival attempt.)
Keep your number of concurrent threads low. Use 4 threads maximum. 2 threads if you want to be safe. Yahoo applies temporary bans lasting 1 hour if you go too fast. (Appears as response code 500 on the pipeline, 999 in browser.) The bans do not happen immediately. Yahoo monitors the number of requests over time, so keep an eye on your warrior, terminate the pipeline and reduce your concurrency if you get banned.