Updates on Old Friends

Out of curiosity, I checked out some of the old Yahoo Answers Accounts to see what, if anything, had happened to them since I last logged in.

Account001 bulkhater:
Still banned from Yahoo Answers, the mailbox contained nine spam messages and a lone myspace notice that a myspace account I forgot I had was about to be deleted due to inactivity. I tried reporting the Spam messages, but got a slew of errors for my trouble.

Account002 bulkhater01:
Still banned from Yahoo Answers, the mailbox contained the following e-mail:

Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:31:30 -0700
To: "Anon Annoyed"
Subject: Yahoo! Answers (KMM58596866V28286L0KM)
From: "Yahoo! Answers" Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert


Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Answers.

We appreciate your inquiry. Yahoo! may, in appropriate circumstances
and
in its sole discretion, remove or edit any content and/or terminate the

accounts of users who appear to have violated the Terms and Conditions.

Any action taken is confidential. We will not release this information
unless required to do so by law or under other similar circumstances.
We
are unable to make exceptions to this rule.

We invite you to visit the Yahoo! Terms of Service and Yahoo! Community

Guidelines. These documents can be found at:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

http://answers.yahoo.com/info/community_guidelines.php

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Answers.

Regards,

Nick

Yahoo! Customer Care

40451616

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/

Original Message Follows:
-------------------------

WHY
WAS
I
SUSPENDED?????

What did I do?????

Account003 lagon.dupri:

Still banned, the mailbox contained...

Well, I wasn't sure at first as I got 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.

Once I did get in I found one lonely e-mail from Yahoo Support:

Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:13:51 -0700
To: "Lagon Dupri"
Subject: Yahoo! Answers (KMM58572206V9182L0KM)
From: "Yahoo! Answers" Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert


Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Answers.

We appreciate your inquiry about your suspension from Yahoo! Answers
and/or the deactivation of your Yahoo! ID. We reviewed your case, and
decided that your account is not eligible for reinstatement.

Once an account is disabled for a violation of the Terms of Service,
the
subscriber to the account will lose the ability to log in and access
the
account and its contents (including email and content stored with any
other Yahoo! service). The account also will not be reactivated.

Should you choose to create a new Yahoo! account, we invite you to read

the Yahoo! Terms of Service and Yahoo! Community Guidelines to help
ensure your new account is not deactivated.

Yahoo! Terms of Service:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Yahoo! Community Guidelines:

http://answers.yahoo.com/info/community_guidelines.php

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Answers.

Regards,

Evan

Yahoo! Customer Care

40532437

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/




Original Message Follows:
-------------------------

What did I write to get suspended?

Why was my account suspended? What did I do that violated the terms of

service?
I answered two questions. Was this political? Did one of my answers
offend someone's political beliefs?

The last gasp of Lagon Dupri

Naturally, I HAD to make my usual, futile attempt to get an answer out of Yahoo Answers.

Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:38:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Lagon Dupri"
Subject: Why was I suspended?
To: answers-abuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com
What did I write to get suspended?

Why was my account suspended? What did I do that violated the terms of service?
I answered two questions. Was this political? Did one of my answers offend someone's political beliefs?

Banned again, but a pattern begins to emerge

My third test account, lagon.dupri, has been "Suspended" from Yahoo Answers.

Date: 10 Oct 2007 06:25:08 -0700
From: "Yahoo! Answers "
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by cc.yahoo-inc.com. Learn more
Subject: Yahoo! Answers Suspension Notice
To: lagon.dupri@yahoo.com

Hello Lagon D(lagon.dupri)

You have posted content to Yahoo! Answers in violation of our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. As a result, your account has been suspended.

If you feel you were not in violation, please contact our Customer Care and tell us why.

Regards,
Yahoo! Customer Care

I'd answered a mere two questions before my most recent suspension. Since this suspension followed my last post so closely, it's probably safe to assume that it was the Cold War related comment that got me suspended. I can think of a few possible explanations:

1. I was banned because of the political content. Given the rather dry, politically moderate nature of my comment, this only makes sense if Yahoo Answers is actively discouraging political discussion that doesn't lean towards the extreme left or extreme right.

2. A group of Yahoo Answers users got together and "reported' my comment, which resulted in a suspension without any review by a human moderator. This makes the most sense if the person who posted the question decided to use it to cheat on their homework and wanted to remove the online evidence before turning it in. I consider this option rather unlikely.

3. Yahoo Answers has found this Blog and is Suspending my accounts based on the information I'm posting. This would be a petty, punitive attempt to silence their critics.

4. My answer was too "wordy" or "Complicated" for the what Yahoo Answers considers appropriate. In other words they've started kicking all the "eggheads."

Please feel free to comment below if you have any ideas about why this most recent account was suspended.

Naturally I'm not going to stop here. My curiosity is piqued and I won't let this go until I know WHY these accounts keep being deleted. To this end, I'm going to try to eliminate each of the possibilities above.

The most obvious step is to remain silent about the activities of a given account until such time as it's suspended. I'll write up the same posts, but I'll leave them as drafts until the Yahoo account is suspended.

Next, I'll stop checking the old accounts from the same computer. Hell, I'll actually delete some of the old accounts, as there's no real reason to keep them hanging around. Yahoo Answers "Customer Care" has yet to respond with anything useful or informative so there's no real reason to keep the old accounts around.

Finally, I'm only going to post the same mindless, unimaginative, two sentence or less answers favored by the other posters to Yahoo Answers.

Don't worry though, this Blog isn't about to go silent. I'm still going to post about some of the idiotic, mindless questions and answers that survive Yahoo's obtuse moderation process.

Still kicking

Surprisingly enough, Account 003 is still active. Let's see if answering another question will get me banned.

(Update: The account has been suspended.)

Q: why didn't the u.s. & the soviet union go to direct war?

My Answer:
Who says we didn't?

First, everyone was looking for peace and prosperity after WWI and WWII and the Great Depression.

Some of the growing animosity was vented through Proxy Wars. Technically, the USA was at war with Communist North Korea in the Korean War, but in reality the Soviet Union and Communist China provided the financing and raw materials.

As time went on hostilities grew, but by the time animosity had grown to the point where DIRECT war was likely, both sides had enough Nuclear Weapons to destroy the Earth several times over. The fear was that if war started, it would become Nuclear and both sides would lob everything they had in an attempt to ensure the other didn't survive.

This doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" was the biggest barrier to outright war.

Side battles vented hostilities. The Space Race for example allowed both governments to "battle" each other without lobbing bombs. Vietnam was a bloody and violent proxy war.

There was also the philosophical problem. Both sides believed their own system was superior. While a military victory would provide relief from the government in question, it would NOT provide a total win in the face of the FORM of Government.

The fall of the Soviet Union was seen by many as the Death of Communism. The remaining Communist governments, like China, are slowly adopting a free market system. The economic defeat of Communism means it has little to no ongoing power.

This question has a high likelihood of getting me banned. It involves politics and I'm trying to remain level headed and fair. As this raving lunatic post reveals, being a member of a lunatic fringe is the way to ensure your questions remain intact on Yahoo Answers.

Yet Another Login

I'm trying again. This will make the THIRD Yahoo Account I've created for using Yahoo Answers, and I have yet to receive any information from Yahoo on WHY the first two were suspended.

The fact that one of the service e-mails reminded me to read the Terms of Service carefully if I created another account tells me that Yahoo isn't banning me for creating new accounts.

First, I'll answer a question in EXACTLY the same way I've seen "Best Answer" rated questions be answered.

The question is:

My brother has pain in the genetic reigeon during urination. This is a symptom of some disease. How to cure it

He complaints of pain and a burning sensation while urinating.
this is probably a symptom of some disease which can be sexually transmitted.
Is there any Natural cure.
he has stopped complaining of this since a month and this lasted for around a week or so.
Is it ok right now(the pain has stopped).

Here's my unimaginative, useless reply, crafted to resemble the responses that Yahoo Answers tends to leave on the question.

He needs to get to a doctor Right Away. There's not enough information to diagnose the problem in your post but he needs to see a doctor.

Let's see if THAT gets me banned. I'm not looking for a "Best Answer" here, I just want to find out what it is that keeps getting me banned. After posting this lone, pathetic "answer" I'm going to leave the account alone for a few days just to see what happens.