Yahoo answers is shutting down! I have mixed emotions. I really benefited from YA in some areas but now the distraction will be gone.?

The writing has been on the wall for some time now (years).  Others may disagree with me, but the downfall of Yahoo Answers comes down to a couple main factors. 

1. Too much anonymity; I get that it's the internet, but when you start letting people post anonymously with zero accountability and zero moderation, it's going to turn into a shitshow pretty quickly.  Each section should've had a or multiple moderators with some measure of transparency. 

2. No measures to combat trolls. Account get banned? No biggie, you can just make another one, takes a only a few minutes and you get right back to trolling with no reprisals at all. People in this section are all too familiar with this. 

3. Yahoo not wanting dissenting opinions;  Yahoo as an entity is fairly left leaning, if you spend any time on their main page, the "news" stories they host are from HufPo, The Root, Sheknows, Buzzfeed, etc. Mostly center-left or left leaning outlets.  Also if you've noticed since the middle of last year, on their hosted news stories, Yahoo has removed the comments section.  The reason for this was the people were posting evidence that clearly showed the outright bias of the "news" stories that Yahoo was hosting, and were posting links to the other sides of the stories that Yahoo's news didn't mention or stories from other sources that contradicted what Yahoo was posting. You'll also notice that Yahoo removed the comments from Yahoo Answers as well.  Again, Yahoo does not want to give people an "open mic" to criticize their position.  With that said, it's Yahoo's website and they can do whatever they want with it. But it doesn't look like it's working out for them if they can't make money off a section that they clearly don't invest that much in to begin with.

My take : Yahoo Answers shutting down was inevitable given the lack of attention Yahoo has given it over the past few years.  Other similar sites do it better; I spend way more time on Reddit. Quora is another option, but I prefer a western-centric site and Quora was fairly Indian-specific up until a couple years ago. I dunno, part of me will miss Yahoo Answers, but I'm not heartbroken to see it go, given what it's become. 

i don't know if there are any other sites....for some reason quora sounds like one that has been referenced.

The overwhelming majority of answers are wrong.  they are so bad they contradict law and even suggest violating civil rights.  The problem is so serious, answers could cause harm to gullible people that don't fact check...harm to their finances, health, legal issues.

The alleged Yahoo Answers team has always enabled the misuse of the site....kicking off good users and doing nothing about the abusers.

Many of the abusers aren't  trolls, they just have an attitude problem...they are clueless, but think they are experts or just don't like the facts and refuse to learn the truth.....and gang up on knowledgeable people.

For example, in the renting and real estate section, MANY answers went against the Fair Housing Act. re disability discrimination.....and no matter how many times I posted reliable sources proving i was right, I was attacked by many others for being giving the actual factual answer....told I was wrong.

Shutting this site down is the only way to stop the nonsense...without investing millions of dollars to hire moderators...