Why was my question "Tobacco and oil pay for climate conference?" removed for "solicitation"?

I had a question removed because it didn't fall into Y!A guidelines as a question. Plenty of them get through OK but if some small minded person reports them they are obliged to act. If you had phrased your question as "Why should tobacco and oil pay for climate conference?" you would have been alright. Y!A do not regard adding a question mark to a statement as turning it into a question despite it being correct in common usage. See guidelines and blog http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-d8pH0dcoRKeB12yOcnU... Don't know what the so called "solicitation" was about though - that seems to be adding insult to injury.

This question gets asked a lot on this forum.Apparently just about everything fits into the category of a YA violation.I like opposing views and rebuttal,but am against offensive language.If it's a public domain link I don't see the relationship to being a sponsor. If it's germane to the topic.But then I don't make the rules and you have to contest it. This is self defeating reasoning,and predisposes the YA forum as pointless.

There are two reasons.

One, providing links is viewed as solicitation to click on the link - as if you're trying to drum up business for the site. I've had that happen to me, except the sites I posted were to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve and other government sites with raw data to back up my explanation of how most of the class warfare myths are just that - myths. I tried to post the same content without the links and then posters with the opposing viewpoint - I'm sure the same ones who initially had reported my use of the links - criticized my assertions because I hadn't backed them up with evidence. So I re-posted the same links and the content was then deleted.

If this is how they do it with Census Bureau statistics, then you can't complain that they do it with op-ed pieces.

Two, it could be because the source you post makes a lot of leaps in its logic.

Large multinationals donate a lot of money to a lot of non-profit activity including science. It doesn't infer that they're buying results. Mutual of Omaha didn't support Wild Kingdom to try to influence whether Marlon Perkins spoke about leopards or gibbons.

And there ARE questions about the dangers of "passive smoking" - a married couple watching tv in a small den for 40 years every night with one of them smoking and one of them not smoking, yes, they're both at risk - someone who worked in a smoke-filled bar two nights a week to put himself through law school in the sixties who never smoked and never had long-term exposure to second-hand smoke afterward who is diagnosed in 2008 with cancer, there's no basis to make a causal connection.

And even if there were a quid pro quo, then the same standard should be applied to anyone who has ever received funding from, or is a member of, an anti-industry group, such as Greenpeace or the Union of Concerned Scientists.

If we automatically dismissed what was being said by any scientist who had received, however indirectly, funds from either "side," then that would leave us with about a half dozen scientists.

Lastly, it is well-documented that if you honestly question the consensus, you're shut out from any source of funding BUT the private sector. The AGW proponents have shut down all other sources of funding for research by skeptics and then they try to discredit the only source of funding that remains.

Generally speaking, people who honestly think they're right don't try to silence the other side.

In fairness, do the IPCC reports get labelled as "paid for by climate alarmists"? The way to make money in the global warming game is to grab some of the $billions that governments spend on climate research. The oil companies simply cannot compete with governmental largess.

And why on earth would a tobacco company cough up money for global warming?

The question was phrased to alarm.

Just Yahoo Answers being ridiculous. I routinely get my questions and answers deleted for reasons that make absolutely no sense.

Basically if somebody (or more likely, several somebodies) doesn't like your Q/A and reports you, there's a good chance that the Yahoo Answers staff will delete your Q/A without looking carefully to see if it actually violates the community guidelines.

My theory is that Yahoo Answers simply doesn't have the staff to check the many Q/A abuse reports, so they are very careless about it.

I asked if anyone was developing 4-wheel drive electric cars in an effort to curb our dependence on CO2 producing fossil fuels....somehow that was deemed "not a question or answer". My take is: If someone doesn't like your stance, they can get your question removed, regardless of its legitimacy as a properly asked question.

I saw your question and thought it and your link was really interesting.

I would have no idea why it would be removed unless a bunch of people reported you, but I would have no idea why they would report you.

I guess you got 'trolled'. Yahoo answers eh?