What ever happened to "Vote on answers" here in Y/A? Is the asker the only one who can now choose a best answer?

Yes, only the asker can now select the Best Answer. Voting on the Best Answer was removed as an option about this time last year when Yahoo went from the Green Format to the Purple format.

As a policy it seems an only slightly less popular decision than the one that now allows Level 7 users to change the category of questions.

Yes now the asker is the only one who can choose a best answer and there is no longer a time limit as to when they do that.

They can choose one any time after an hour to never.

Question can be answered now even with a Best Answer being selected. They took voting away when they decided this change was a good idea.

To compensate for not getting 1 point for voting they decided to double the daily answering limits or so it seems.

Staff blog about it here, http://yahooanswers.tumblr.com/post/80173794953/im...

Community voting has been gone for a long time.

The only person who can choose "Best Answer" is the user who originally asked the question.

Yes, now only the asker can choose BA. Community voting was discontinued when Yahoo introduced the new format.

Choosing a Best Answer

Did you receive an answer to your question that was right on target? Let the answerer and the Answers community know it was helpful by choosing it as "Best Answer."

Choose your question's Best Answer

You'll have the option to choose a "Best Answer" one hour after asking your question.

Find and select My Questions.

Click on the question.

From the answers underneath, find the answer you like best.

Click Choose as Best Answer.

Once you've selected the Best Answer, this selection will be saved.

Under "Rate Best Answer", click the number of stars you’d like to give it.

Under “Comments," feel free to let the answerer know you appreciate the help.

Click Submit.

Success! The Best Answer will move to the top of the answer module.

Alert: The community vote option is no longer available. To find out more about this change, please visit Answers Help.

Compared to Google answers. I think it's a better system and yahoo shortcut

only the asker

I'll tell you what happened. People were answering long-forgotten questions, then voting for their own answers. It's called point gaming.

They changed it