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JB
Lv 7
JB asked in Yahoo ProductsYahoo Answers · 8 years ago

Does Yahoo Answers have inconsitent policies?

Recently one of my answers was deleted, apparently because of a user clicking the "abuse" button. The message I received from Yahoo Answers said in part:

"If you believe that your answer was wrongly deleted

by the community and would like to appeal the deletion

of your answer, you can have your case reviewed by

Answers Customer Care. You have 7 days to submit your

appeal. Please be aware that if your appeal is rejected,

an additional 10 points will be removed from your account."

Since I felt my answer was good and should not have been deleted, I appealed. That appeal was received and generated a message from Yahoo Answers that said in part:

"If Customer Care approves your appeal

Your content will no longer be hidden from public view.

You will be able to post new content on Yahoo! Answers

If Customer Care declines your appeal

Your account and your content will be deleted."

These two statements by Yahoo Answers seem quite different. Had I known my account would be deleted I would not have appealed. What is going on here? Which of Y!A´s statements is correct?

Update:

Well, I clicked on the link in the email message Y!A sent me, to appeal. I don´t see how that could have caused me to appeal a suspended account, since my account was not suspended. However, I failed the first 3 CAPTCHA´s before the appeal was accepted.

Perhaps it is a bug in the new Y!A appeal system. It does seem to have other problems, for example a user (one of the answerers here) sent me a message and the link to reply via Y!A did not open a window to reply, so I could not reply to his/her message.

Update 2:

@Duke: Thanks for the incouragement. I´m still here, so they didn´t delete my account. I am still not a happy camper with this new version of Y!A which is not only inferior to the old version design-wise but is also full of bugs.

4 Answers

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  • Duke
    Lv 7
    8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Long ago I had the same problem twice. I remember the second time - a contact of mine asked me to answer somebody else's question about a functional equation (in Portuguese, but the mathematical matter was clear to me). In my answer I explained that I could not answer, but in English, and expressed a hope the Asker would be contended. Whether the Asker found this "abusive" or not, surprisingly my answer was deleted with similar text from Y!A staff. I visited the Asker's profile, he/she was from Brazil with the internal Y!Mail service disabled, so I could not connect with him/her to settle the matters. My contact suggested to appeal, I did, but several days later my contact suggested to appeal again, stating "The Y!A staff automatically deletes reported questions/answers because they deal with hundreds or thousands reports from all over the world and they have no resources to check each of them individually. When a person appeals AT LEAST TWICE, the deleted content may be restored, so be persistent!". My second appeal was successful and my answer was restored.

    What lessons did I learn?

    First, maybe the staff deletes some content automatically whenever a report comes indeed - I have reported 3-4 cases (e.g. plagiarization or insulting religious beliefs in the Mathematical Forum) with immediate success - possibly Yahoo! has a database of "reporting persons" and I remember a message "Your report matters!" when I have done that.

    Next, the Y!A slogan "Share your knowledge" may be a good one to share with everybody needing help, but the experience has taught me to visit the Asker's profile before answering to have at least a faint impression. Very often I refrain from answering if the Asker has hidden his profile, or disabled the internal mail service, or has the habit to send all questions to voting, showing no further interest, without saying at least "Thanks for the answer".

    Well, Y!A is not functioning perfectly as we wish of course, but I have had a very nice time with it in recent years and I have met nice people all over the world, so I am grateful. And you, JB - you be persistent!

    P.S. Agree, there are too many bugs in Y!Answers. And I would like to provide a link to the question, described above, but it was several years ago and I almost lost orientation in the jungle of my 1600 answers. I can imagine how hard is the life of some Top Contributors with, say more than 20 000 answers!

  • RAY G
    Lv 7
    8 years ago

    The messages aren't inconsistent.

    The first quote is about appealing deletion of an answer. The second one is about appealing account suspension.

    Generally, one violation won't cause account suspension. The second message is either a mistake, or you did something that kicked the issue over to a suspension matter.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    8 years ago

    What it looks like to me is the first one is from CC.....

    The second one looks like it may be from the Y!A team by the way they refer to CC.

    You are not on a new account so it would appear you won your appeal either for a guidelines vio or a suspension apeal.

  • 8 years ago

    Yes they are taking medication, etc.

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