One aspect of the Yahoo! experience that always left me shaking my head is the News Message Boards. Easily accessible from a "Discuss" link at the bottom of news stories, it was the stomping grounds of trolls and other hate mongers with little to no social value, unless of course you are a troll.

But now I say, "Hallelujah!" Break out the bubbly and do a little jig on the table because the powers that be at Yahoo! News have shut down the News Message Boards. The "Discuss" link has been replaced with a link labeled, "What happened to the "Discuss" option?" The message at the other end of that link takes you to a short explanation of how the boards were dominated by a few, links were difficult to embed and something bigger and better is soon to replace the old board system: "Over the next few months, we plan to offer new discussion forums based on topics in the news and incorporating the latest features to foster a better discussion for all of our readers."

Will it be an implementation of the new Yahoo! Message Board system or something digg/Netscape-like? Will it combine Yahoo! 360 blogging platform to be more like Newsvine? We'll have to wait and see.

According to James Derk in his Scripps Howard syndicated column, Yahoo! Answers is now a disaster. He says it was once useful but now is overrun with spam, chat-happy posters and others who simply disregard the guidelines knowing there will be little to no retribution.

I have to agree, sort of. It hasn't become the putrid cesspool the Yahoo! News Message Boards are, but can I see it coming.

Yahoo! announced in a press release that many long-awaited upgrades were soon to appear on Yahoo! Finance, albeit some only in beta form.

Stock Charts - Google showed us that they could beat Yahoo! to the punch with their Ajaxy charting tools. Unfortunately for Google, the financial users are a pragmatic bunch and need more than the "kewl" factor to make them switch as indicated by Yahoo! continuing to hold the financial users' interest. According to this recent announcement, Y! Finance users will soon be enjoying new kewl dynamic charting tools which take advantage of Flash and DHTML . It pays to be patient, eh?

Message boards - Yahoo! has been upgrading its message boards throughout its many sites for many months now. Yahoo! Finance has seen some of these changes already. Easier search, threaded views and now a rating system to quickly locate quality contributors to the conversation.

Y! Finance Badge - Y! Finance badges for your website have been out in beta for a while now but according to this announcement are out of beta and available for general consumption.

Y! Finance Videos - Y! has made huge advances recently in its ability to serve video regardless of where it is hosted. This is spreading to various Y! sites including Y! Finance. Today's announcement points out that video from several news sources are being made available via the Y! Finance site.

The new stock charts are being evasive. Hopefully we will see them in action soon even if only on a beta version of the Y! Finance site.

UPDATE: The new chart tools are being rolled out to small percentage of users for now. This is much as the ! home page revision was revealed to only a few users for their feedback before opening it up to all Y! home page visitors. More Y! Finance users can expect to see the new chart tools as time goes by.