SHOULD YAHOO SUSPEND THE PERSON WHO POSTS "THE RULES OF THE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION" WITH 19 DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS?

It is probably spam. Maybe the book he is promoting is his own or authored by his brother-in-law. Yes, he should be suspended for egregious violations.

Well, at last RE and I agree on something. I also believe it's Spam and the one who's behind it has to be the writer. This sort of 'advertising' this person is doing is totally free and he has nothing to lose. On the contrary, he could even sell a couple of books. So, as long as he can sell a few, he'll keep on doing it. By the way, I remember that last year he was already doing the same but after a time, he stopped completely.

I wonder how the people in Brazil have reacted because it targets mostly Portuguese speakers learning English. He must have flooded the Brazil chapter!!!

I've lost count how many times I've reported this 'question' and all the notes I've added in the Additional Details box. I will keep on doing it as long as Yahoo does not do anything about it.

I remember that last year I got reported because of a question I posted and it was deleted right away. I admit my question was a huge mistake but it only took Yahoo a couple of minutes to delete it. So, obviously, they could do something if they wanted to. Why haven't they done anything about this? I remember having read that a number of Y employees had been fired. So I suspect there might be a shortage of capable people right now.

What to do? Honestly, I don't know. I'm no computer geek and I could suggest would sound so naive and childish.So, I guess, he'll eventually get tired or bored of not selling enough books and go out and get a job.

The system normally just looks at things on a per-account basis.

Each connection to the Internet has a unique number (used for routing data on the Internet) called an IP address. Yahoo generally avoids looking at things on the basis of IP addresses, because of library/school computers, and households with multiple users (one router with one IP address, multiple computers, multiple users).

However, in a case like this, an IP address blocking might be called for. Did you make sure, in reporting this spam, to mention that they keep creating new accounts, and provide detailed information and links to the multiple different accounts?

If the moderators don't know what is happening and connect the accounts together as being one user, they will continue to just delete the new accounts and not block the IP address.

There are a handful of things that you have to take into account here before getting so upset.

First of all, each individual computer connected to the internet get a unique address, an internet protocal address, an"ip address" assigned by the interner provider. But that doesn't mean that it's just me using my one and only computer. What if my computer was shared by 50 or 100 other users inside a building (or a company world-wide net) and some people (all with unique yahoo id's) wanted to ask a question? The so-called "ip" would always be the same. Should we kick that ip address off of yahoo - no.

However, in this case, the same ip address shows-up asking the same question over and over although, slightly changed in syntax from time to time. What could yahoo do?

You must keep yahoo questions in context. It's only a tiny, tiny part of the mega-volume part of the world-wide pieces of yahoo. There are millions and millions of users every hour - not to mention what goes on in a day! And yahoo can only afford to have so many thousands of employees to police this manic mess.

Yahoo could have a tiny program to parse the questions and match them with the incomming ip address. It's eazy to do. I write programs for the net and I could write it in 15 minutes. But what good would that do? So somebody asks a lot of questions? Now, you'd have to match the content of the question to see if it's the same "sort of" question again. Now you'd have to "teach" this program all the languages of the world plus word similiarty recognition. This massive effort is not beyond yahoo's resources but they need to be spent elsewhere.

Yahoo needs to worry about identy theft and people using answers to find kids - things like that. They don't have time to worry about someone asking the same question over and over. So what? Their attitude, I'm sure, is just live with it. Don't go crazy over it.

They have to ignore such minor abuses to focus on crimes of a much more serious nature.

I know, I know, it's a real pain in the *** but just ignore it. They will.

Rich

I certainly think that this individual's account(s) should be permanently cancelled, let alone suspended. I spent all of Friday evening and all of yesterday evening reporting his posts (as Spam) and this morning I see that all but 2 of his posts (at least the ones that I reported) have disappeared.

In my view, idiots like this spoil Yahoo Answers for those of us that enjoy answering questions and reading the answers/views/opinions of others and there is no place for this sort of blatant spamming here.

I am afraid that in the end, I resorted to profanity in my replies to his posts (in Portuguese) and, whilst I fully recognise that this is unlikely to achieve anything positive, it did at least make me feel better! (It was, after all, 1.00 a.m.here in the UK and perhaps I wan't at my most coherent at the time...)

I agree, I've reported the prat many times but he's still here....I think if no-one answered any of his silly questions, he'd give up....but there are people who will answer...even with a 'what???' or a 'stop asking this!'...it only encourages the wally.

Graham H...suspension IS permanent. I should know, I've lost 9 of them.

I think so - I must have reported the guy like 20 times. He probably just keeps making new accounts though.

in keeping with risk so Holli...yet they easily did no longer do it of their own accord. curiously slightly demonic persuasion is going a protracted way. now that is me who's inspired. welcome back sessh. :)