Anyone have any idea why YAHOO! changed the answer format?

I don't know, but if you want to read an insipid parable on dealing with change then the book in the photo is bound to insult most people's intelligence. An airline that I used to work for in the 1990s gave every employee a copy of that tripe. I read it and tossed in the garbage. Notice "amazing" is intentionally misspelled.

idk ask them lol

Well,  beyond the usual bellyaching, and b*tching answers...........the obvious answer would seem to be some need for software updating. 

If you consider the site is now 14 years old.....going on 15......and in that time,  Windows 7  has become obsolute, and Internet Explorer no longer functions very well....... clearly, they needed to upgrade the site for todays more powerful  and better supported  servers. 

This clearly no doubt means changes to their old programming and the need to "freshen" up the site. 

Why they chose to give us Halloween hats, instead of addressing  some of the actual problems here though, is anyone's guess. 

But no doubt , time and the advancement of technology forces the occasional format change here. 

that's my best guess. 

Competition there Trying to Compete with other Sites

Keeps you on your toes.

to make it better, as technology advances we must too. we don't wanna look stuck in 2010 because if we do nobody will wanna use the site. 

yes, it's capitalist business dogma. It includes the fairytale that if you don't keep changing things, people will get bored and leave the site...

They changed it to make it better, remember change is good

Yahoo does it every few years. I think this is the 3rd iteration. The first one was the green format. Then it was the purple format. And now it’s the blue format. 

It does it so that the employees have something to do so they can keep their jobs. We all know that when yahoo does any changes, a bunch of problems arises. So yahoo employees need to fix the problem hence that’s how they keep their jobs. 

They don't understand the concept of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" 

Instead of fixing the issues that are already present they decided to mess more things up.