Is the new Y!A an example of good Programming & Design?

There are a number of things to be said for the design, but a lot more to be said about (mostly against) the management of the project.

First, the initial rollout was an abrupt change to a longstanding user interface. It was also incompletely tested, since many glaring bugs and regressions were present. There was no open beta or pilot project site where extra user participation could help work out the bugs.

The initial rollout appeared to be in the US, which essentially seemed to say, "Let's take our largest market segment and make them the involuntary participants in our pilot project."

Some memory returns...at first, the "purple" site was only enabled late night/early AM, so maybe that was their idea of a pilot? The results were predictable, though. Check the feedback area and the responses are heavily negative. Part of that is normal...people with a gripe are more likely to say something. Still, it's hard to find positive needles in this haystack:

https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/211240

They've fixed one of the most serious regressions...not being able to resize the answer window while editing, but there is still much more missing. Comments don't work, or not like they used to. There appears to be a ton of history of past messages, but no practical way to review farther back than some small number of months. You've been around here for years. For an exercise in futility, try scrolling back to your first message. You can get there, in green.

(Maybe that works better on other browsers, but I've been using Mozilla since Netscape 2, long before it was Mozilla.)

We need to make a careful distinction between 1) programming, and 2) corporate decisions. This purple new Yahoo has all the hallmarks of CORPORATE decisions having been made, i.e. top-down designed and directed, probably as a response to competitive pressure and ever-changing user expectations. As a result, "niche" users of Y!A (such as the mathematical community), are left behind, or simply thrown under the bus. I give Y!A an F for failing to make it easy for users to do mathematics on Y!A, it's definitely a lot worse, more cumbersome, and buggier than the old green format. And of course it goes without saying that Y!A is now THOROUGHLY cluttered up with advertisements, so much that even when the window is re-sized to make room for other documents to be used alongside the Y!A window, it is the dialogue window (in which the typing is done) SHRINKS while all the advertisements stay in place unchanged and in your face.

But of course now I hear "programmers" wringing their hands about how good a job they are doing, when we all know that all the faults with the new purple Yahoo is driven from the top corporate echelon for purely market reasons. Of course top echelon corporate people always blame the underpaid workers under them for everything. Always.

I like the menu on the left, however, it was very confusing at first to know where to go to see my questions, my best answers, the most recent questions asked.

I also think there should be another section for yahoo discussion. It sucks to not have a conversation about the answers given.

from my computer, usa yahoo answers now using old format, usa yahoo answers was using new format maybe for about 5 hours then change back to old format.

but yahoo answers for other countries are now using new format.

i dislike the new format because new format can't be browsed properly using web browser with javascript turned off.

and new format no longer has 'advanced search' feature

Conceptually it's nice, but it has so many glitches to it, I can't believe they haven't revisited some of their design choices. Seems to me it'd be better to be consistently functional rather than being occasionally good. They added functionality, but lost a lot in the transition.

hahaha great question!

i've had so many problems!

my answers have been cut off

i cant upload multiple photos as answers

the comment button for ratings does not work at all!

the my activities page is entirely in-accurate

plus what everyone else said...

it could be so good!

thats why where here and not at stackoverflow!

one dayy.....