Why can Askers answer their own questions?

It's one many changes, Yahoo felt it was a good idea, you don't get points and you can't choose your own answer as best answer. Check the link.

http://yahooanswers.tumblr.com/post/79509311376/an...

One reason given, was that the asker may find the answer before one is given. Which I will admit has some degree of merit. However I also see it to open for abuse, at different levels. Something I won't go into. However I suspect others who have been around longer than I have also see how, and where it can be abused. The good thing as pointed out, the asker can not award themselves best answer. Also something else that's nice, is they also do not get two points for answering their own question.

That change was not implemented to cheat the system. It was a token compensation offered to offset the ability to vote for our own answers, we think. Since staff doesn't have to justify OR explain their reasons for changes, we can only make assumptions. The STATED purpose is not to cheat - but to post a GOOD answer if we find one ourselves after receiving answers from other users.

We CANNOT select our own answer as Best Answer.

We MUST post an "answer" to the question; posting a comment is a reportable violation.

Since Y!A changed to the new, widely-despised site format, users have been dropping like flies. Yahoo! is resorting to stunts to try to keep the remaining users engaged. Letting narcissists answer their own questions is one of them, as is putting an indefinite time limit on open questions. Anything they can do to get users to ask more questions and give the appearance of having more activity (such as open questions) on the site, they'll do. Although Yahoo! tripled the advertising space on the site, if sponsors find out what a ghost town Y!A truly is, they'll pack up and leave.