I have participated fairly extensively, perhaps even obsessively at times in Yahoo Answers. I mostly hung out in the adoption section. And while there are some actual questions there from people seeking answers, a good number of the questions are more rhetorical and aimed at making a point in the community. The community is a fairly divided one, with some people (mostly adoptive parents and random people) seeming to say that adoption is wonderful and adoptive parents are generous, and on the other hand others (mainly adult adoptees, but also first parents and adoptive parents) saying that adoption has a loss at its core and it is important to the emotional health of adoptees (and adoptive families) to acknowledge that and keep it in the open. You might correctly guess that I’m among the latter, though I’m an adoptive mom. Anyway, there is a fair amount of heated “debate” rather hampered by the Q&A format. Actually, I think the format interferes with actual exchange of ideas and tends to polarize a bit, especially with the thumbs up and down thing. It would be nice to be able to talk back to people without the threat from Y!A? to delete your answer. Most areas of Y!A? aren’t like adoption, though. The other heated sections that I have seen are Politics (duh!) and Religion. A lot of people would be surprised that Adoption is right up there, I’d expect.

Max