What is the reason for violation when the reason states TOS violation? Isn't that circular logic?

You actually got a response to your appeal? Wow. You're lucky to have been notified whether or not your appeal was approved.

But yes, that's pretty vague and doesn't help any. If that's the type of response they give, then those of us who never heard back aren't missing anything.

It means that rather than violating Community Guidelines /info/community_guideline... (which is the norm for violations on Y!A), that Customer Care decided that your question was a violation of the Terms of Service https://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/

It may indeed sound a tad bureaucratic at face value but the contents of the two documents are different. However the TOS is unwieldy and it can be difficult to grasp some of it due to the terminology (and even phraseology) used.

If you quote the question (including all comments) then someone may be able to shed some more light on why it breached the TOS (or didn't).

There is some element of luck with who you get in Customer Care at the time. I remember I got a violation once , appealed it and it was declined as spam..... the issue was that the only link I used was to one from the Y!A Help pages of all things! So I used the link on the help pages to re-appeal explaining and it then got reinstated.

The Yahoo!Bot is fairly simple code.. it just sends an email telling your appeal is declined with the reason being TOS violation.

Appeals in YA almost never work, no matter how right the individual is with it.