Why can't I delete my own question on Yahoo! Answers? And why can't I edit what I've already written? Ridiculous!?

Yahzmin ♥♥ 4ever2015-03-06T14:01:23Z

Favorite Answer

Let's take these in reverse order. You can't edit what you've already written ONLY on questions. That was implemented to prevent trolls from posting a question, receiving valid answers - and then altering the base question to make those answers appear to be violations so they can get reported. You CAN add updates to your questions to correct anything you might have posted improperly in the original question.

You can delete your question, but only up until it receives answers. This was partly done by staff as a result of users here complaining that askers would post a question, get good answers - and then delete the question instead of giving out a Best Answer, thereby robbing somebody of a well-deserved 10 (or more) points. It also means that more questions are forced to remain on the site, making the site appear to be larger and more active, which may be the larger reason why this was implemented. Sadly, this often means questions with a single bad answer end up staying on the site, taking up space with useless nonsense.

oklatom2015-03-06T14:05:29Z

You can delete your question up to the point it gets an answer, then if you could delete you would also delete the answer, which isn't yours to delete.

As per the help pages:

Changes to your question or answer

After posting an answer, feel free to edit or delete it up until the Asker chooses a Best Answer. A question can only be deleted before it receives its first answer.
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/answers/question-answer-sln4198.html?impressions=true

As to editing your question, you can add detail, but not edit what is already there. If you could it would be possible to ask a question, get answers, then edit the question to make all the answers in violation and report them.

As it says on the help pages: "Sorry, you cannot edit your question once you submit it. However, you can Add Details to augment or clarify your question."

.2015-03-06T13:59:33Z

Once you get an answer, Yahoo no longer allows deletion. They have not told us why, but the theory is that more questions means more advertisement revenue.

The reason you cannot edit your question is that it would mess up the reporting system. Suppose, for example, that your original question was "What is the process for amending the US Constitution?" Now further suppose that after you got some good answers, you edited your question to read "How do I deal with missing data in SPSS?" Now all your answers could be reported as "non-answers" when someone sees them. That would not be fair to the people who answered your original question in good faith.

FemaleLotRfan2015-03-06T16:42:09Z

The inability to delete is because once a question has an answer, it can't be deleted. The Edit thing is just how the site was designed.

Emmanuel2016-12-01T19:20:45Z

honestly i dont know :/ just make it anonymous