Why are some answers hidden? I have seen many valid answers hidden. Including some of mine.?

Yahoo has installed some (very annoying) software that sorts answers by relevance to the question, though the length of the answer seems to matter, too. If the answer doesn't meet this software's specifications for relevancy, it gets hidden. This is why you sometimes see some legitimate and even highly rated answers being hidden, the software doesn't think they're relevant enough.

Personally, I prefer to decide for myself what is and isn't relevant, but I will admit the software is sometimes right.

The hidden answers are a new computerized way to sort answers according to their relevance in answering the question. It is done automatically and Yahoo! has not said why some answers are hidden and others are not. It seems that one word, few word or answers that do not effectively address the question are often hidden. ( Some of mine have been hidden too)

You can still see the answers by clicking on the words hidden answers.

I am not a fan of hidden answers, didn't like it when answers were hidden due to a lot of thumbs down (done by humans) and don't like it now when it is( done by software.)

Answers that are hidden,are hidden because of the length of the answer,and it also have to do with how much the answer relate to the question.

There's a relevance algorithm, but it's obviously not very good. 90% of the hidden answers are good or relevant.

It's hidden if any one of these occur

- 2 or more people reported it

- Yahoo's engines detected it as spam

- It's less than 2 lines or approx 20 words long

- 4 or more people gave it "thumbs down"

- Keywords are unrelated to the topic or question