Why is everyone so obsessed with Andrew? So many people have been asking questions about him in this section recently. Why?

 I am not so you can scratch me off the everyone list.

By "everyone" you mean some obsessed saddo who makes sock accounts to amplify their current obsession, and I'm not entirely unconvinced that you're not that saddo adding yet another question.

Andrew was a regular user of very long standing.  An abrasive sort, but not malicious.  Very knowledgeable and unapologetic about his tastes and views.  His style doesn't have a place on the modern internet of instant outrage, unfortunately.  He pissed someone off and they went off on a vendetta to get him banned and yet he still lives rent free in that person's head, hence all the "questions" and poor impersonations of him.  It's all rather sad and squalid that one person can cause so much damage due to whatever imagined slight.

some treat this site as a playground, some take it seriously..

in my experience, much of the "discussion" and "conversation" about a single user is generated by that user him/herself, either through use of alternate accounts, an act that is purposely-designed to attract attention to itself or (most likely) a combination of both...

the rest is simple human nature...how many story premises can you name revolving around the theme of "the mystery antagonist" and "hidden identities?"  ... in how many stories is the protagonist's angst over not knowing his/her true enemy's identity as big an element as the enemy's actions?

many users here have very distinct acts, often made more distinct because they constantly remind you of the distinct parts ("I am a retired CIA agent"... "I am an award-winning composer"...."I am a lesbian single mother of 11"... and so on...). ... a big part of that user's "identity" is, in fact, the mystery and not the act itself... some of us really want to know "is this guy/gal for real?"

now that this site is closing, the self-promoting trolls and those obsessed with the "need to know" both hear the clock ticking... what you're seeing is a combination of people desperate to "know" and those desperate to be "known" getting in their "last licks"...

Isn't it obvious why? I mean, why wouldn't they be? 

His answers are still up, but no longer bear his name. They show as Anonymous. That's what happened the most recent time I was banned.

Here's how it started...

He was one of the regulars in this section and he posted here for years. Most of the other regulars got along with him pretty well, and I find it a stretch to think that he was the type of person to bother with sock puppet accounts. Most of the upvotes he got probably came from other users, but he did get plenty of downvotes as well, because as Voelven said, he wasn't the most diplomatic or tactful fellow. At the end of the day, this site was designed so that people could ask knowledge seeking questions and receive knowledgeable, accurate replies, but this isn't chemistry - it's books, so people had more leeway here when it came to asking questions that were more about opinions than facts. It's just that some people abused that and took it to the extreme. 

Essentially the questions asked in this forum fell into four categories: questions focused on factual information about the topic of books and writing, i.e.: "Does anybody know who wrote this book or story?"; questions focused on opinion, i.e.: "What do you think of this story?" or "Who's better, Tolkien or C.S. Lewis?"; questions posted by self-professed amateur writers asking for plot ideas, names for characters, suggestions for a title, etc., and I'll lump the endless questions from lazy schoolchildren looking to get someone to do their homework for them into that category as well; and lastly questions from users that had practically nothing to do with books or writing - repeater troll spammers looking for attention, people with mental issues that were compelled to obsess over something very specific, and people who were just looking for a chat or a bit of back and forth. I think most of the regular users on this forum - Andrew included, did genuinely try to be constructive, but the plain and simple fact is that a good portion of the self-professed authors here - especially the adolescents, weren't all that accepting of criticism. And while some users demonstrated a remarkable degree of patience with repeater trolls and donned kid gloves with users with fragile egos, others weren't like that, Andrew being famous - or perhaps infamous and notorious, for not playing into that game with them. 

Whenever something is free, the quality is going to suffer and people will find a way to take advantage of it. Pound for pound there were ten or twelve people in this section whose answers were far and away superior to the next thousand people who would reply from time to time. I would say that love him or loathe him, Andrew was a guy who obviously read his fair share of books and while his delivery may have often left something to be desired, his replies were informative and insightful. I'm sure if you were to ask him how he felt about being hated by legions of people he perceived to be buffoons he would likely tell you that the opinions of people who know what they were talking about when it comes to books and writing are the only opinions he cares about, and I think it's probably safe to say that the wide majority of users who are well-read and capable of producing a decent piece of writing would say that Andrew was the real deal. You really can't fake that sort of thing. If you're going to be a pompous prat you have to be able to back it up, and the man did. 

As far as Andrew being overly cruel and evil, I think that's a big exaggeration. If he were still around and it were possible for him to make his account history public, then the case could be settled definitively, but that's not going to be possible with him gone, so people will have to decide for themselves using whatever first-hand information they might have, and that's only fair. it's been said that the greatest compliment one human being can pay to another is to say "I'm better off for having known you." Personally I think this section would have been all the poorer if not for Andrew's contributions and I doubt that I'm alone in that. If people have an axe to grind and wish to spend their last few days on this site seething with hatred for a guy they never met, I don't think it will affect anyone other than themselves really, so they're more than welcome to do that if it makes them happy. Soon this will all be nothing but a memory. Those that remember Andrew fondly can content themselves with the thought that he very likely feels the same while those who hate him and hold him in contempt may one day come to the realisation that the man never even knew they existed. 

-and that would be the end of us. 

I don't know what happened to Andrew. I haven't seen him around recently, although I have seen some anonymous answers that are very Andrew-like in wording and style.

His name keeps coming up, because he used to be very active in this category, answering a lot of questions. He was well-read and knew what he was talking about, hence why you find other answers agreeing with his.

To me he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, but he wasn't someone to sugarcoat anything, and he could occasionally come across as harsh and rude. I believe this was in part because he was fed-up with the trolls and some of the more asinine questions being repeatedly asked in here, just as many of the other regulars myself included, are. This is of course just a guess on my end. Maybe that harshness got him blocked/deleted? Or maybe he just reached his breaking point and decided not to bother with Yahoo Answers any more. I know I've been tempted to leave several times myself as well.

In any case, I've missed seeing him around, but since the site is closing down, I guess it doesn't make any difference any more.

Andrew is a very talented writer and has a lot of potential and he would have to go down as a "professional troll".

His trolling was hidden beneath scholarship that a Hebrew biblical writer would be proud of but as a lot of what he said was hidden inside great walls of essay which people rarely read he managed to spam the forum with some of the most obscene and vile acts of cyberbullying one could imagine.

The person that asked an innocent and interesting question might be the only actual person to read this essay and what it contains is insults regarding the questioners mental capacity that would shock you to the core. 

His advice usually included to stop using yahoo answers, take your meds, and after you have got a life, kill yourself. This was typical Andrew.

His overall message would be that he is a genius telling you the truth and his opinion is shared by Yahoo Answers and the wider Yahoo community.

Next, the questioner would sit and watch as Andrew's thumbs up went 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and this should give you some idea of just how many anonymous sock puppet accounts he had.

However this presents a problem for the questioner, should the questioner respond with something obscene such as "eff off you demented vile and disgusting person", then everyone is going to see this and it could end up with the questioner being banned, whilst they do not even bother to read exactly what the eloquent Andrew's post actually contains.

However Andrew eventually did get banned from Yahoo Answers and his posts finally removed, and this is why you will not be able to see them.

However for those that know Andrew, they know he is still here hiding behind a copious amount of anonymous accounts. 

Thank you.