The Fourth Account

Dear God, I've created my fourth account and have YET to find out why any of the previous ones were suspended. Allow me to introduce keaton.alex, the newest pseudonym I've used to find out just how innocent an answer I can post before getting banned. In accordance with my plan detailed in Banned again, but a pattern begins to emerge this post will remain a "Draft" until the account is suspended, at which point I'll publish them in a batch.

For some reason when I signed up, I was given the Yahoo Singapore terms of service and my language was listed as "English - Singapore". I'll be generous and write that off as an error in figuring out my IP address. The amusing thing is, I'm not using any kind of a proxy, so I'm not even trying to hide where I am.

My first answer was, as planned, short and only marginally informative at best. The question asked was:

What is the best type of wood to burn in an indoor fireplace?

My answer was:

I've seen "Wood Stove Pellets" at home improvement stores. That might burn well, but I think you're supposed to have a stove made to burn them.

My answer is vague, poorly informed and a bit backward, all characteristics of things I've seen listed as the "Best Answer." The reality is some wood burning stoves are specifically designed to take wood stove pellets, and you should stick to the pellets if you have such a stove.

Next, a bright bulb asked: How do you make friends?

I replied, in as Yahoo Answers friendly a manner as I could muster:

By smiling and being nice. :)

Notice the insipid "smiley" at the end?

Finally, I decided to push my luck and answer a third question on my first day:

Q: What does mutual friends mean?

A: It means a person is already a friend to both of you.

Let's see if the account is still able to post to Yahoo Answers in a few days.

Interestingly enough, a good hour and a half after creating the account, I still can't get into Yahoo Mail. I get the error message:

Sorry for the inconvenience.

You've stumbled upon a temporary problem we're having with Yahoo! Mail. Usually this problem gets resolved quickly, without you doing a thing. In fact it may be taken care of now.

• Try pressing the Reload or Refresh button on your browser, or logging out and then back into your Yahoo! account. Hopefully that will take care of things.

If that doesn't fix the problem, please be patient while we sort it out and try again shortly. The fact that you're reading this page means we've been automatically notified of the issue, and chances are we're working on it now.

• If you think you've been more than patient and tried the tricks above, feel free to contact Customer Care about Error Code 1.

Thanks,

The Yahoo! Mail Team

I tried logging off and logging back in to no avail.

I wonder, have they flagged my IP address? I've created four Yahoo accounts from this computer in a fairly short time frame, so it's possible some bit of code designed to catch Spammers has tripped. I'll wait and see.