Feynhoo

Transform Yahoo! Answers search results into reasonable and smart quotes

For the impatient: Install script (Firefox Greasemonkey, Google Chrome, and Opera supported)


The #2 scourge of the Internet is Yahoo! Answers. Sure, it's sometimes fun to browse it and gawk at the incredible stupidity of its userbase. But the problem comes when you try to search for something legitimate with Google, there's inevitably a Yahoo! Answers result on the top page. I literally cringe when I see them. So I decided to do something about it.

Feynhoo is patterned after FeynTube, which itself deals with the #1 scourge of the Internet: YouTube comments. Feynhoo is a Greasemonkey script that looks for Google search results that point to Yahoo! Answers, and replaces them with quotes from "famous Nobel-prize physicist and elaborate skirt chaser" Richard Feynman. The result is guaranteed to be more insightful and intelligent than what would have been there, had Feynhoo not been installed in the first place. If you really want to go to the original result (and are a fan of banging your head against your keyboard), the original result's link is preserved.

Feynhoo works with Mozilla Firefox (with the Greasemonkey extension installed), Google Chrome, and Opera. Feynhoo has nothing to do with FeynTube, other than I consider FeynTube to be the best Greasemonkey extension ever (though my own Feynhoo is a close second).

Installation

Click here to install the Feynhoo script. If you have Firefox (with Greasemonkey installed) or Chrome, it'll prompt you to install it. Confirm, and you are ready to search Yahoo! Answers-free!

Opera users will have to do some extra work to make use of user scripts. I may write installation instructions some day. Or you could search for instructions yourself.

Known Bugs

If Feynman quotes are exceedingly long, Feynhoo will chop them up and only display the first part. To view the entire quote, click the quote preview, which will expand the to the entire quote. This works fine in Firefox and Opera, but Chrome is missing some DOM functionality to be able to do this easily. There is a workaround, but it would have been a major pain in the ass. So I'm considering this WONTFIX; Chrome users only get 60% Feynman (by weight, not volume).


Ryan Finnie