Politicians Test the Waters with Questions on Yahoo! Answers

There are many varying opinions about the site known as Yahoo! Answers. If you are not familiar with the site, it's a website where people ask questions and other people answer them. Deep questions, shallow questions, important questions, and a lot of really, really UNIMPORTANT questions!! You don't win anything for answering (or asking) questions, except points, which are worth absolutely nothing except the opportunity to answer even MORE questions per day as your points rise!

Ok, sounds pretty lame when you put it like that, huh? I guess Matthew Miller would probably agree with that assessment, since he wrote in his AC article, "Why Yahoo! Answers Is A Waste of Time" that "there are few things as sad and depressing as the questions and answers on Yahoo! Answers." Rachel Carey disagrees with Matthew, though, and called Yahoo! Answers "the knowledge of the world at your fingertips" in her article "Website Review: Yahoo! Answers." All that being said, there are legitimate reasons to spend some time on Yahoo! Answers, as you will learn if you read Sabah Karimi 's informative article called "How To Use Yahoo! Answers to Promote Your AC Content."

No matter your opinion of Yahoo! Answers, it is becoming more and more obvious that the politicians have decided to see if they can garner a little more "free publicity" by asking their own questions on Yahoo! Answers. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and John McCain have all tried their hand at this new form of communication, and from the amount of answers that each of their questions have received, they are getting noticed, although I would hesitate to go so far as to say the responses are all, or even mostly, positive. In fact, there are a lot of people up in arms, expressing their opinions that politicians should not be allowed to use Yahoo! Answers for this purpose.

Hillary Clinton seems to be the most prolific of the politicians who have asked questions on Yahoo! Answers, with three questions, the first of which was asked back in October of 2006.

How can we as a country promote alternative energy, use less foreign oil and reduce global warming? Received 2196 responses.

Based on your own family's experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America? Received 38208 responses.

How can we help to prevent and someday eradicate breast cancer, which has touched the lives of so many people? Received 5284 responses.

Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and John McCain have also each asked a question on Yahoo! Answers. (If there are others, I haven't yet spotted them.) Obama wanted to know "How can we engage more people in the democratic process?," and 3067 people gave him their opinion. Romney's question, "How can we change the tax code to ease the burden on our families and promote growth and innovation?" received 1573 responses. Last, but not least, McCain asked a question (which I have not yet located), but which raised a lot of dissent and other questions about the appropriateness of such "stunts" by politicians.

What is your opinion? Do you think asking questions on Yahoo! Answers is a worthwhile use of the politician's (or rather, their staff's) time? Do you think these questions will do them more harm than good? Or do you think it was a total waste of their time and a publicity stunt that only a few thousand people (many of them too young to vote) were even aware of?

The Internet has provided the first opportunity in many decades for a new method of "getting out the vote." What was the last opportunity ... perhaps the invention of the television back in the early 1950's? It will be interesting to see how politicians are received on websites such as Yahoo! Answers.

You will find the links to several Yahoo! Answer profiles of politicians at the end of this article. By scrolling down the page, you will find a link to their questions and be able to read the responses. One thing in common that you will notice right away ... although they are all very good at ASKING questions, none of them apparently ANSWERED any questions while on the site, as they are all still at a Level 1 with ZERO questions answered!!! Guess they didn't understand the concept of the website, huh?