OK or offensive?
As we strive for high-quality content on Answers, we encourage freedom of expression and discussions on any topic. However, you can sometimes stumble upon questions or answers that seem to blur the line between strong opinions and a violation of the Community Guidelines, plagiarism, or copyright infringement.
Strong opinion vs. violation
Everyone has opinions, and these viewpoints are what make Answers vibrant and fun. Respectfully expressed opinions that contribute to useful community knowledge are accepted on Yahoo! Answers. However, anyone who promotes hate speech, uses slurs to refer to groups of people, insults other members, or acts in a belligerent manner should be reported.
What’s considered offensive?
It is not OK to report someone because you disagree with that person’s opinion. If you see something that is personally offensive to you but does not violate Community Guidelines, please do not report it. Others’ opinions may contradict your own, but please consider whether their comments are truly in violation. Does a comment contain slurs or insult other participants? Do you think it’s obscene or illegal? Remember that people are entitled to their own viewpoints, and it’s up to everyone to express them in a respectful, constructive manner.
Please find the Community Guidelines here: http://answers.yahoo.com/info/community_guidelines. You will become less empowered to remove abuse from the site in the future if it is determined that the people you report are not in violation.
What is plagiarism?
Intellectual property infringement is a reportable offense on Yahoo! Answers, but the process is a little different from ordinary Community Guidelines violations. If you believe your intellectual property has been infringed upon and would like to file a complaint, please see our Copyright/IP policy.
Have more questions? Let us know.
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How about just plain stupidity? Your statement on personal offensive and violation of community guidlines is in itself violated every day. I know you can’t monitor everything. But sometimes you see to over moderate or undermoderate.
I think there should be restrictions on posting questions that relate to race. Most of the times, questions on race openly attract answers that are offensive and just downright insulting. There are Y!A users of ALL races and ethnicities, and I’m tired of seeing questions like “Do you find black people attractive” and then see the answers following that say things like “eww they’re gross etc.”
As long as the content doesn’t violate the Answers Guidelines, then offensiveness is all right to an extent. Mostly, I think the use of foul language is offensive depending on the person who is asking the question, to some it’s everyday talk. Rascists and hategroups on the other hand should keep their traps shut (or fingers tied) and just answer the d*** question with reasonable replies.
My suggestion, (if at all possible) is tighter restriction and monitoring of all the parts of YA, from the avatars and their names, to the Q’s and A’s themselves. There has been an increase of “weird” so called answers that have images and other garbage not anywhere related to the Q, and the very-close-to-hateful comments/answers. I personally have had several people have a link to my profile page that was not wanted or asked for – another oddity that needs scrutinizing. Overall, YA is a great site for entertainment, that a few tweaks would make it even better. Thanks YA :]
I think you should have more moderators for your various question and answer forums. That would take care of a lot of the problems you want people to report. I see things get reported over and over, only to be ignored, I’m assuming because of lack of staff behind the scenes.
It would also help to have someone monitor, at least every now and again, and see if people actually know what they are talking about instead of just posting “Hey! I don’t know!” or dangerous information, just so they can get points.
Wow! to have taken your own advice when we were struggling in our appeals that would have been nice and appreciated – a human element in the appeal process.
Jabril
Sometimes I wonder about this. I raised a flag on a question that presented the name and age of a minor, with an approximate locality. The question was not removed. I raised a flag with this same information that was posted on a different question but under the poster’s name. I am wondering why this question was deemed as appropriate.
I find this blog necessary. I know that I seen illegitimate questions before, but people have fun and play along. I think it’s harsh when people say a question was stupid- Especially if the asker really wanted to know. I think Answers is doing satisfactory as it is. Btw, on race-related questions, yes, some are terrible, but I think they can also be elighteningin, by making some understand that not everything is so black and white.
THERE ARE PEOPLE OF A DIFFERENT RELIGION THAT JUST WANTS TO PRACTICE CENSORSHIP. YAHOO SEEMS TO BEND TO THEM EVEN THOUGH COMMENTS ARE MADE FROM A VIEWPOINT OF CULT COUNSELING……….
I WISH YAHOO UNDERSTOOD THAT…….UNLESS YOU BELONGED TO A CULT AND SPENT YEARS HEALING FROM THE ABUSE…….YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT……..
The guidelines seem meaningless.
I have received violation notices for posting quotations by Henry David Thoreau that (obviously) the person simply did not understand.
Your “guidelines” are all well and good, but who really cares?
People report violations for any reason or no reason and they are all the same – they are always upheld regardless (a complaint that I posted a quote from Robert Heinlein was “violated” for who knows what reason)
The “guidelines” appear to be meaningless.
It’s all very well for you to post a generalised blog like this, but it would be far more helpful if you gave us proper feedback on the things we report.
I frequent the Religion and Spirituality section, which is plagued with trolls, attention seekers, cut and paste spammers and one particular idiot who uses multiple accounts to post the same question over and over again. It’s a bit disheartening to keep reporting in an effort to clean things up, only to find that nothing ever seems to change. Could you not give individual feedback, either to say that a report has been accepted or to explain why it has been overruled. This would give us a far better feel for where you set the boundaries, and help us to do a better job of community moderation.
yahoos policy of allowing users to do their work is the cause,,,,,posting a recipe for arroz con pollo is bound to pee somone off
Yahoo! Answers is the premier site on the internet for hate. A huge percentage of questions and answers are nothing but bigotry, racism, insults, incendiary etc.
Community Moderation is a joke and obvious abuse is frequently reinstated while legitimate questions are deleted.
Try something like IP banning, requiring unique nicknames or e-mail verification. Rather than make excuses just admit it’s about maintaining numbers and not about preventing abuse.
Your post fails to mention the need the “exploiting the community” section of the community guidelines. Users are constantly being bombarded with inappropriate messages from sellers of fraudulent diet aids and similar products. Does reporting them do any good?
You really need to get on the ball about the spammers that have been cropping up. I think we all know the ones I mean: “Hello dear, I’ve had this problem as well. Go to: randomsite.notlong.com.”
Or the pagestretcher “Nike” solicitor spammers. Whatever happened to using IP bans? I still see these guys.
i dont think theirs a big problem. Im white. If someone asked do you find white people attractive, i would maybe laugh and look at it but i wouldnt care. I know black people are more of a minority but its not like their is only a few. This is to the second comment by the way. Sometimes people just need to chill out.
people that ask how to hack questions shold be removed we spend lot of time in helping people with there pc problems.
i created this group to help stop the real violations–trolls who break teh rules and falsely report others
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AnswersPatrol/
WHEN YOU SIGN UP FOR A Group, IT WILL SHOW YOUR EMAIL AND THE NAME YOU SIGNED UP WITH. YOU MAY WANT TO CREATE A JUNK EMAIL ACCOUNT AND USE A FAKE NAME.
Many HARMLESS so called violations–as simple as someone saying THANK YOU are being called violations (for chatting)…or just because a question is related to someone’s personal situation–it is reported for chatting–even though there are many in a similar situation that benefit from the question…trolls claim taht every question must have UNIVERSAL APPEAL–i have news for them..NONE of the questions have universal appeal..99.99 do not appeal to me!
and usually the appeals are lost..
while the trolls that are rude are left alone by the Answers Team…they are allowed to get away with having multiple accounts and insult others–and use their accounts to make false violation reports..which the Answers team deems reliable…..
a rude troll is reported–nothing is doen–the victim publically posts a response telling the troll off..adn then that victim gets a vioaltin notice fro defending themselves..
if answers would take care of teh abusers–the victim woudln’t feel compelled to defend her self…
since yahoo refuses to go after the real violaters–people should be allowed to defend themselves publically on answers–using forceful language
Well, I think the middle ground between both extremes is disputed, and such is unavoidable. For such border line disputes, I think it should be up to the thread creator what’s appropriate for that thread.
For instance: We all agree that it’s a bad idea to cuss at the top of our lungs. Is it safe for someone to utter profanity in common conversation? Not in my opinion, but that should be up to whoever started the thread if such a think is allowed on whichever website this is taking place on.
What about people who abuse the ‘report abuse’ button? I had several questions removed, simply because someone didn’t want me to get the points or because they disagreed with my answer. How is that not a violation of the community guidelines? How do they not suffer any consequences?
Great post, now let’s try to encourage people to actually answer “controversial” questions instead of just preaching at the asker.
wow great blog…. NOT
i would say 70% of answers that get reported are purely opinion based, they then get removed.
i had my account suspended for what reasons i dont know.
i posted in religion and spirituality a fair bit, and due to my views (and im very open about different religions) i got suspended.
but of course by me commenting on this page im actually just helping yahoo answers publicity wise.
it always runs in a circle
you just cant escape it
thank you so much for posting this article. i was recently reported simply for disagreeing with the opinion of a responder to a question posted in y!a.
fortunately y!a really does mean it when they say you can appeal, and that they will re-instate the points lost as well as give demerits to the person who uses “reporting” tool as a weapon in a discussion.
i have been a contributor for some time, and i do it for fun and education (mine as well as others’)… this makes me feel a lot better about y!a.
I am glad that you have community guidelines.
I do think, however, there should be a time limit for reporting someone. I have a girlfriend who…whenever someone disagrees with her politically…goes back and checks everything that person ever posted. I have known her to report posts that were several months old.
And Will is right…sometimes you do seem to under-moderate. Yahoo Answers should have some kind of filter that catches certain offensive words so that someone whose post violates community guidelines doesn’t see two dozen other posts using the same language (or offensive word) that have NOT been reported. It would be nice if Yahoo could maintain some kind of consistency, and catch violations on your own without requiring someone to “report” the violation.
Please – Don’t Go There!
I’ve been waiting for an explanation of why I received a Violation Notice that I did NOT deserve (IMHO) – and I have received NOTHING (except a “canned” reply). I think I am entitled to a more forthright, polite answer.
You state “…that people are entitled to their own viewpoints…,” but I frankly wonder. In my view, it looks like I should NOT have ANY strong opinions that the “powers-that-be” don’t like. Or is my reading of the Community Guidelines skewed in any way?
I would like to know. I await your response, Ladies and Gentlemen.
if someone gets an answer from the internet and doesn’t cite the sources is that considered plagiarism?
Yeah, you guys at Yahoo! gave me a violation notice for an answer I gave, citing as a reason “Insulting other users” when it clearly wasn’t, it was just stating facts. I basically said that no one is born gay, and no one is born straight either. How the heck is that offensive to anyone? And to make things worse, you rejected my appeal, and that ultimately resulted in my LEVEL 6 ACCOUNT (with 2 TC badges) being suspended.
You guys at Yahoo! Answers need to stop taking sides on issues and START PRACTICING WHAT YOU PREACH.
Hypocrites.
It would nice if there was some feedback in response to reporting. There is currently no way to know if you’ve improperly reported something or if you are more or less “empowered” by your past record of reporting. Please and thank you.
Are you ever going to ACTUALLY enforce this in the Religion and Spirituality section? I am getting fed up with having questions deleted just because some fanatic disagreed with the position.
Some users insist on showing their own arrogance or stupidity. As long as new users can vote and leave comments, the next violation of common manners is just seconds away (with another account ID).
LIAR! I posted a question asking about blacks that owned slaves in South Carolina that was deleted by you guys and it wasn’t racist at all or offensive, it was the truth. Even the black people I talked to said they couldn’t figure out what was offensive about it.
This is a lie, a straight up blatant lie.
Keep it clean. Don’t insult any group of people no matter their opinions, lifestyles, etc. And don’t retaliate against someone in a question. Report them. That’s all you can really do. I can’t tell you the umber of times that I’ve seen stuff that’s offensive on so many levels. I’ve had offensive acts coming on me even… if indirectly (for example I saw a screen name that was “Liberal Girl Hates Conservatives” once).
All in all. I wish people could just (opinion wise) agree to disagree. And as for everything else, don’t ask about it or don’t talk about.
I have tried, and been unsuccessful in receiving an answer, to ask the answer hometeam folks if posting a downright lie is breaking the guidelines. A member emailed me that his post (that his girlfrind had his baby but now wanted to know if “it” could still be aborted) was an outright lie. Again, I ask, are outright lies outlawed? the man in question said he did it to expose “hypocritical” pro-choice folks. thank you.
Yahoo needs to monitor these sites more carefully-free speech is well and good but when people post racist, homophobic, religious postings , Yahoo need to stop it straightaway.
What about the idiot who had the icon of a KKK member saying “The KKK will rise again.” I reported him based on his icon only. He is still allowed to make comments because Y/A only reads his answers instead of looking at the overall picture. I have also reported other users bashing homosexual people. Their comments still are there. So Y/A actually condone racism, bigotry and ignorance. Yet my answers have been deleted because I won’t help an individual with their homework or I point them to the right forum because they won’t find the answer in the forum they posted on (NEVER once insulting the poster or making any kind of ignorant comment). Y/A needs to get it together because they are not doing a very good job.
lovely!
The problem is you haven’t made it clear enough to people what the difference between opinion and outright hate is.
Also, ‘freedom of speech’ is something that needs to be addressed as many people seem to think it gives them the right to say absolutely anything about anyone. So much so that it conflicts with the guidelines.
Then when these violations get reported, they rant about their rights being infringed and how they don’t know why. The community will remain in turmoil unless this is dealt with adequately.
Also, the fact that Yahoo is a private company and as such isn’t bound by that part of the constitution needs to be made more obvious.
It all sounds good, but the implementation of all of this is a joke. There are many grey areas, but giving people the benefit of the doubt just doesn’t seem to happen. I lost my account because of this.
OK or Offensive is in the eye of the beholder! OK or Offensive is extremely subjective.
Yahoo! and the rest of the people who think that Yahoo! needs to do something about something they don’t like need to read the Constitution of the United States (where Yahoo! started and is still headquartered)!!! By Yahoo! enacting censorship, they are playing straight into the hands of those who wish to brainwash our society!
As an American elder who was born here and whose lineage goes back several generations, I strongly believe in the Constitutionally given Right to Freedom of Expression.
All in all, considering the thousands of accounts and questions found on Yahoo Answers, I’d say you guys are doing a pretty good job. I like the set up and design of the forum and it is very educational, in it’s own way. Of course, you can’t make everybody happy, but keep up the good work anyway.
There is absolutely no freedom of speech whatsoever. And the site is far from “vibrant.” The reason is that if anyone posts differing opinions, their answers are deleted and usually for an extremely vague violation…like “chatting.” Tell me, if we are not allowed to give our opinions then how in the world can this site be vibrant or interesting. Eliminate the “chatting” violation. Period. You need to make up your minds whether you want this to be a truly interactive site where members can communicate freely with each other…or if you just want this to be another Wikipedia type site. Because at the moment, I feel like we are being treated like a human version of Google or Wikipedia.
Also, there is no consistency. I have reported questions and answers that made blatant racist remarks, and I know for a fact that other members have too. And yet, those were questions and answers were never deleted. But if someone makes one single comment that disagrees with the asker or another member, it’s counted as a violation. And usually no specific reason is given. I have a feeling that the asker will report answers just because they don’t agree with them.
YA staff needs to make up their minds what they want YA to be. Eliminate some violations (like the nonsense “chatting” violation) and use stricter enforcement of other rules. It’s completely rediculous that a racist answer or question can remain, but someone who just gives their opinion about something is reported.
Sometimes the Judas-tree sprouts many branches, to bloom sheer wonders,
Without noticing the fertilizer it is rooted in, is icky from all that plunders,
Wary of the words to be, seems the words are severed,
Whats wrong to you or me, are left untethered conveniently,
Sh ., it is a word,
He’ll tell me so,
Yet neither of us to let it Go,
Plumage of the turkey’s spry,
Time for din’s and grandma’s pie,
So what if they blatantly don’t answer your question? Like I’ve asked questions about baby formula and get answers like “You shouldn’t give your kid formula it’s child abuse.” I mean, isn’t that a violation?
really…
I could tell this article was written out of being ticked off.
I like pretty much what I see in Y!A, the only issue I have is when I sometimes ask some question that include a taboo or sound scandalizing in some part even being an honest question. Of course, I believe that you moderate on best your best effort and I truly appreciate that, I would just like the moderators to read beyond the title to realize when a question is valid.
And one more thing, please do not forget to always add the reasons when closing a question! At times you honestly can not realize where the violation is until you realize that something has been taken as a link by mistake or you are using a word that is considered too harsh by accident.
In general, thank you for Y!A
Yahoo Answers is doing a great job so far in my opinion. Yes, it does have some flaws with spamming and such but overall it lets people truly excersize their speech freely. If a person does not like anothers opinion they should ignore it or debate it.
I lost an account because of what I said. Well, two things I said, but out of thousands of answers, which were not vulgar and very helpful, two fricken answers ended it all for me.
The history of good posts is overlooked because somebody who does not like me got trigger happy on the report button. I still have not gotten a reply from customer service regarding my second question to them.
Anyways, both things were vulgar, but they were not threatening. I think if there is a single threat or harrassment that is on going for 4 or more posts from an individual to another individual consequences like deactiviation of an account are justifiable.
If it is vulgar language in an attempt to be funny there should be a five day suspension the first offense, a 10 day suspension the second offense, and a third offense is grounds for deactivation or a twenty day suspension. It depends on the content. The fourth offense is an automatic deactivation of the account.
I am not the only one that is pissed about the b.s. that occurs on this site and from the ”customer care”. Yahoo needs to hire full time moderators and the removal of the report button. The report button is abused. Only threats and a history of one person harrassing another person should be under review.
That last sentence I mean under review for automatic deactivation. I also think if an account is deactivated, it should only disable Y!A and not all of Yahoo services.
I think it’s perfectly fine to post links of anything that’s not illegal inside of questions and answers, just warn people of the nature of what’s on a URL. I’ve had several Questions of mine removed simply because some YouTube links contained some Offensive but legal music. I was very respectful about it, and I did not say anything offensive in my question. There was a warning that the music was offensive, yet it was removed hours after I asked it. I put a link for offensive music in the URL option of this comment. I suppose this comment needs to be removed now? Click the URL at your own risk if applicable, it’s that simple.
Chipmunk, the Yahoo! “community guidelines” are hopeless meaningless and vague. It is impossible to say anything about a certain religious group (and we know which one it is), since their oversensitive tyrannical members will report it as “abuse,” while it is perfectly acceptable to ridicule the Christian religion. In other areas, persons are permitted to talk about initimate sexual activity without any hint of objection from Yahoo! and reports about such conduct are ignored. On the Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! has the audacity to permit obscene banner ads to run at the bottom of the groups and does nothing to eliminate them. Community moderation cannot work. Someone has to develop a standard and enforce it.
It seems that the only people who have problems with Y/A are ones that go to the opinion categories like politics, religion, spirituality, etc.
Those of us who use it as a knowledge site (math, business, science, art) have no such problems. We respect each other and couldn’t care less about like what the color of your skin is.
now that’s coincidence…..i wrote an appeal form for my account suspension and sent it to the customer care last night!,
however upon seeing this today….i mean wtf?, it looks as if its a retaliation to my testament of appeal!
Your guidelines are useless because you selectively enforce them. The message you seem to send is that it is OK for top contributors to do anything they want but not for the rest of us. You also task the Community with enforcing law and order. What you need are OBJECTIVE moderators who are not involved in the competition for points. Allowing the community to moderate is a lot like the NFL or NBA allowing the athletes on the court/field to officiate their own games. You also create a lot of the problems by introducing categories that can cause emotions to rise (politics and government, religion and spirituality). You are trying to create a sort of utopia on the internet and that can’t be done. The only way this can be done is to only allow questions that can be answered simply like:
What is the capitol of Wisconsin?
Who is the First President of the United States?
Not as much fun I suppose but hardly controversial. What you really need to stop doing is coming down on the users and fix your own problems
Banning IP addresses is stupid because public library and workplace computers tend to have the same IP address. By doing this you would punish two trolls and about five innocents.
However, you can sometimes stumble upon questions or answers that seem to blur the line between strong opinions and a violation of the Community Guidelines, plagiarism, or copyright infringement.
From the posts I have read in this thread and the comments I have seen in the forum, it seems to me that the Answers Team doesn’t really understand where the line is.
I post in Religion and Spirituality, among other sections, and I have been surprised by the number of times answers are removed because someone doesn’t like the content, and nothing seems to be done about it. Equally, some content that clearly violates the rules is left up, despite being reported, and users who consistently violate the rules are still allowed to post.
In one religious section I visit, there is a user who targets other users because he doesn’t like their opinions or their religious beliefs and posts a list – his deck of cards – of the people he wants his friends to block and report, and he sometimes sends his targets vaguely threatening emails. Nothing seems to happen to this user, despite many people having called Yahoo’s attention to him. Several of his accounts are still active.
In another instance, I recently answered several questions posted by someone who posts the same content over and over again as both questions and answers under a number of accounts, and I cited the number of times he has posted that content in my answers – and my answers were reported for “repeated postings” and “not answering the question.” While he had obviously reported me for calling him out for his violation, my appeals were denied and his content remained.
Each time users like these two violate the rules without penalty, each time perfectly legitimate content is removed, the credibility of the whole reporting process, and of the rules and guidelines themselves, comes into question.
I think that expanding the list of check boxes from the current 2 to more might be helpful. Rather tha a generic complaint, this world itemize the possibilities to the extent that reviewers could address the specific complaint when eveluating the legitimacy of the claim.
What irks me the most, is the uneven and occasionally, contradictory decisions on appeals. I made the exact same response to two different questions about the ACLU. Both were reported as violations and the answers removed. I won one appeal and your decision was that it did not violate standards, yet I lost the other appeal because it did!
Where is your sense of continuity of decisions?
I vote for heavy moderation. Yahoo Answers can be a great source for information. However, it is often plagued by advertisors & people with nothing to say who are seeking to gain “points”. There is no need for a freedom to respond to earnest questions with insulting replies. If in doubt, delete them.
I have seen many people suspended and deactivated for rediculously vague reasons or reasons that have nothing to do with the evidence against the individual. I have also come across members reported for racist or homophobic remarks walk away scott free. It makes me wonder what Y!A is really about and ask myself if this is a community I really want to be a part of. Fortunately for me, I have not been crumpled this way yet… but I am afraid the day will come when I will be the victim of false reporting and an ignorant appeal system… it scares me pretty bad actually considering I enjoy sharing knowledge and having a place where nearly all my questions can be answered.
One thing that does bother me is when people ask the same questions that have been asked several times before, without running a search before they ask. I do wish people were as crazy about the search button as they are about the report abuse button.
In the time i have been here I’ve seen the quality of answers go down. A lot of the answers in the category i answer in are just plain malicious. A lot of the answers,the ones that answer, Absolutely don’t know what there talking about. In the security category you have to have some idea what your talking about because if you don’t you will cause someone to break there computer. I’ve been here long enough that i have figured out most of the ones who post maliciously are the ones who post finely veiled spam. Which i have noticed a lot of that on the security forum. So yes a lot of times i speak kinda rough on the forum simply because I’m trying to keep the questioner from being fooled into going to some site that isn’t even tested yet. And others that don’t even show up in a google search yet because there so new. As long as yahoo allows the inmates to run the asylum spammers are gonna be here. I know i get a little rough sometimes. But sometimes you have to call it what it is. Piss people off and hope the one your trying to deter catches on.
Too bad the people that need to read this are not the type that are going to read the guidelines or blog anyway. That is always the case when problems are brought up. If people read the guidelines, about 1/3 of the questions I see would not even be asked. Too bad you can’t report a question just for being unable to make heads or tails of what the person is asking due to a broken sentence missing key words. That would knock out another 1/3 of them. You can’t tell if they are in violation of guidelines if you can’t tell what the heck they are asking.
Free speech is simply that: FREE SPEECH. so called ‘community guidelines’ no matter how innocuous or well meaning are censorship and abridgement of true freedom of expression. They interfere with the exhange of viewpoints that are devisive and contriversial and insult the intelligence of Yahoo’s subscribers by suggesting that they need some ‘Big Brother’ corporate entity to shield them from opinions they find personally offensive.
I answered a question once and it was removed…I simply reversed the posters topic back onto them and asked how they would feel…Now granted I was extremely harsh when I did so but they didn’t really seem to understand how sensetive of a subject it was so in order to demonstrate it I had to be harsh…i don’t remember the specifics but they wanted to know something like why they wouldn’t show pics of dead soldiers…I simply told them it was a matter of respect for the families and then asked how they would feel if I demanded to see pics of thier mother if she died…harsh…but necessary…I find that a large number of people on here are way to imature to ask or answer alot of things they do…
hey, thanks 4 removing my question. and thanks for removing 50 of the points i earned
What I want to know is why can’t Y! A ban the trolls that repost the same questions repeatedly, and write offensive ( and clearly fake) questions.
There is one in the Marriage and Divorce category that posts under several names, and if you point it out, the troll attempts to ban you.
this is clearly wrong. I have, many times been removed for expressing an opinion that isnt in the right obama worship line of thought. I have not insulted any one. I have not violated nay TOS. I have merely posted FACTS, not even opinions, and gotten a violation. Yahoo should spend less time expressing their left wing slant, and more time being non partisan
freedom of speech. Sometimes it’s okay to hear the offensive comments because that’s life, and really what people are saying and thinking. I want to be aware of what people are really feeling.
but it’s confusing too, I posted a technical question, asking if anyone knew how to build a form on a website and gave a link to a holistic school that had a good example, somehow this violated the rules, and my question was deleted? why? I never found out. so stupid.. I was told that it wasn’t a question that could benefit everyone, well yes it could if you were interested in doing that, plus what about all the sucide questions? relationship questions, that are very specific to that person’s situation. I emailed and posted another question to see if I could get to the bottom of it. All I got was an email saying that it violated the terms. It seems like it’s a yes or no for appeals and it’s whatever button the monkey pushes. Maybe you should respond to people as to WHY, help clear some things up
What about obscenely poor grammar? Can something be done about that?
I’m not talking about the people who made honest mistakes. I’m talking about the dipwads who don’t bother to spell or type correctly, even though (if?) they can. It’s insulting.
The thing that frustrates me the most with the violations is it never says what part of the guidelines you are supposed to have violated. That makes it very difficult to formulate an appeal.
This isn’t right. I’ve posted plenty of questions on here that didn’t break the guideline rules but still got deleted.
The guidelines are extremely vague anyways, so half the time I would beleive people if they told me they didn’t understand them.
I said it before, but I guess the comment got deleted. I was simply trying to ask about blacks that owned slaves in South Carolina, the question got deleted though. It wasn’t offensive, and I didn’t make it up either. I produced facts, I showed them but it still got deleted. It wasn’t racist, no one thought it was. I had asked it on other websites, even some of my black friends seen it and didn’t think anything of it.
Two days ago, someone reported me so I appealed it. I won the appeal, it said I wasnt breaking any guidelines, but right after that it got deleted again for violating the guidelines. How does that makes sense?
I would appreciate it if the moderators got their act together and quit being biased about things. I could go on and on about this stuff, but don’t want to take up other peoples space.
YA is a very good setup to educate and enhance ones knowledge and activity but those who pose, silly questions, bad remarks, unrelated answers or market products must be stopped.
Lets develop an educated and professional YA family unit
Don’t feel bad folks. I get thumbs down or reported all the time. The reason being i don’t go for the bull shyt that is posted in my category. In my category if you don’t go along with what the status quo says is right then you get thumbs down or reported. If you try to tell someone new not to listen to the ones that you know are posting things that are potentially bad they get mad at you for telling the questioner not to listen. When i see someone post something dumb or stupid i call it what it is. There was one the other night that told the questioner to turn off his firewall while using lime wire. That would fix his problem. I told the questioner not to listen to that dummy. Never turn off your firewall for any reason. The guy got mad at me for calling it what it was. It was a dumb thing to tell this person to do that. If it’s dumb, Then it’s dumb. Are we not allowed to speak what we know is the truth? Yahoo Answers isn’t what it use to be. It’s been taken over by spammers, Malicious posters of all kinds. It seems to me what they should be worried about is all the spammers and Malicious posters that are on here. But instead they worry about whether someone has offended someone by telling them the truth of how they feel and what they feel is right. Sounds to me like they need to get there priority’s in order(Stop letting the inmates run the asylum would be a great start) before Google puts them out of business.
One other thing, Why are people allowed to ask the same question over and over again. I wouldn’t be afraid to bet that the question, “What’s the best free anti virus that i can download” gets asked 50 times a week. No one ever does a search. Yahoo, It seems to me that before anyone asks a question they should be directed to search first. This place is full of redundant questions. Seems to me you could do something about it to keep down the redundancy.
What you should do is create a point-base for users. The more they get reported, the less they can answer every day. I’ve seen a few guys who always posts advertisements, and not everyone reports them, they just “thumbs down” to hide the post. I’ve followed those offenders, and everywhere they go, they post their irritating ads!
I think that you need to loosen up on the feckin course language filters
(that was f_E_ckin, which isn’t a swear word, just in case it gets filtered anyway). Sometimes the silliest words get filtered, even if they’re suitable in Children’s rated television (I’m thinking of the ‘C’ rating in Australian television standards – which has far more “swearing” than Yahoo Answers 
).
After that, restrictions need to be put on suggestive content that some users tend to put as their avatars etc. Otherwise it’s just double standards.
How about requiring a CAPTCHA for answers by level 1 people to address what Master_W mentions regarding the rampant advertising spam?
Otherwise, I for one don’t expect freedom of speech, I realize Yahoo ultimately owns the content anyway, but Yahoo will do nothing but earn bad karma with users when it decides to cherry-pick and enforce the bad but forsake the good.
Whatever drives advertising, that’s clearly what’s really important to Yahoo. I mean that’s cool, whatever to earn a buck and all, but picking on people who are honestly expressing opinions approaching meaningful, that’s just spiteful and makes Yamster™ look like a weenie.
You might try reading the appeals instead of letting the collective send canned spam back.
I couldn’t agree more with your assessment. Variety of opinions does make for interesting reading. I posted something similar with methods of identifying abusers and I got slammed with ‘why do you care, let Yahoo deal with it’, ‘get a life’ and ‘leave us alone, rat!’ type comments. All I did was tell people to check the profile before answering questionable questions. If everyone said ‘let someone else worry about it’ there wouldn’t be room for the good questions.
I stated that if a profile used to post horrifically obnoxious questions is less than 2 days old, has less than 50 points and answered no questions they are most likely fake and only there to get a rise out of someone. I thought these were a minority but it appears that the main use of Yahoo Answers is to be annoying as a hobby and I am the minority by wanting to have fun in a decent and respectable way.
I refrained from suggesting that Yahoo ban the ip address of abusers so they can’t log on under different names when their account is suspended but now I think they should. Make it permanent for repeat offenders. Abusers have nothing to offer to the community and they don’t even use the advertising so Yahoo has nothing to gain by allowing them to come back.
I believe that spammers should be banned immediately and permanently for the first violation. They know the rules and will just get a new profile but don’t make it easy for them. Ban that IP address. Abusive people should be suspended from answering for several days or even weeks. Age restrictions should be better enforced too. People who get a significant number of ‘thumbs down’ should be checked out by Yahoo and suspended if they are being abusive. I would love having a job punishing abusive people.
You need to update your “customer care” before you try to tell us what is and isn’t appropriate.
I don’t find it very professional to run a site where you do as little as possible to communicate with its users. The hell is the point of that?
It is my understanding that answers that are incorrect are not a violation of Community Guidelines and are not reportable. Is that true?
Why on Gods earth would you delete a question
that I posted pointing to an article By Dr Thomas Sowell as supporting info. It was deleted? Why
would this offend anyone? Is it because it was not
flattering to Obama? I really dont understand?
who is running this answers page? Dr Sowell
is a Well Respected economist, author and Professor
who also happens to be an African-American, Is this why it was deleted?
All too often I see Answers that are offensive in a harmful way: misogynist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise demeaning. Often I see Answers that, were the Asker to follow their advice, could lead to a lot of trouble, even legal problems. In these cases, should I be reporting the offenders? Or do I just mark it up to ‘difference of opinion’?
anything can be determined as offensive according to point of view.
There are races of people who will use the racist word for their race without worry, but if someone else uses it then it is bad, why?
I am not offended by F~uc~k or P~uss~y (second only means kitten anyways) and so on, the majority of people I would think aren’t offended by it, why are they censored?
what determines when a word or phrase is censored when everything is subjective? Isn’t this kind of childish? Immature, I mean yes it’s immature to use bad language maybe but more immature to play victim to words.
Christians HIGHLY see God Damn it or Jesus Christ as an extreme offense, blasphemous serious sin to say either of these in anger… but Yahoo doesn’t care to censor those, why?
what if I decided to be offended by the word whopper, should whopper be censored?
Why are my posts in here constantly being deleted? I am replying to the topic and being nice. Why not trust your members to decide what offends them?
Just for the record, You can go by thumbs down when reprimanding someone. The thumbs down feature should have been done away with long ago. It’s meaningless. I’ve seen people get thumbs down, Including me, That gave a good,right answer. It just didn’t agree with the masses. Example, You tell a questioner that AVG free is about as sorry as it gets and even point out to the person why and tell the person to go read on the AVG website and see/read for themselves, You will get all kinds of thumbs down from the fanatic AVG pushers. As i have already said. If you don’t agree with the status quo you will get thumbs down left and right. You will get reported by the spammers and everything thing else. AS LONG AS YAHOO ALLOWS THE INMATES TO RUN THE ASYLUM IT WILL NEVER BE AS IT SHOULD. THEY NEED TO EITHER POLICE THERE SITE OR SHUT IT DOWN. AS LONG AS THEY DON’T IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE.
It’s only a matter of time before this site will be rated red @ web of trust. It’s on it’s way to being over run with spammers, malware posters and you name it. They had to shut down 360 because they lost control of it. It is already happening on answers to. It’s only a matter of time.
Sheesh, I think you really need to take away the ¨member policing¨ crap. I´ve been reported twice so far (in the same day, and I suspect, by the same individual). I appealed both and one was accepted and the other wasn´t. I was in no violation of guidelines in either, although in one I expressed a strong opinion, and another poster responded to me negatively, by name (the person who I think reported me).
Also, when someone reports you, you should be able to see who reported you (maybe they´d be embarrassed to be so liberal with the ´report´ button if they knew that you would know who they were) as well as their explanation of why they reported you, so that you can argue your case of why you didn´t violate the particular rule that they claim you did.
Honestly, though, I think we need to just get rid of the member reporting. I actually don´t care what people say, even if it is offensive…. even if I don´t agree with them, they do still have the right to freedom of speech, and I do hate having my first amendment rights trampled upon.
I don´t really like the idea of letting the question poster delete comments he/she doesn´t like. Lots of people posting the questions are looking for a specific viewpoint or an answer that is in line with their own beliefs, and I worry that they would report anything that doesn´t agree with them and their beliefs.
OK here´s something I just thought of, if we really MUST do the member policing thing. Here are two ideas to improve it:
1) How about requiring that 2 or more people report an answer before it is deleted? That would eliminate some of the idiots who do it just because they don´t like a person or disagree with the opinion
or, how about:
2) Let people who are Top Contributers in a given area, help ¨police¨ those areas. I would love to do it (I´m a TC in Pregnancy and Trying to Conceive).
Like, you could keep the flag thing intact as is, but after something is tagged as a violation, have it go to a special section where the TCs who happen to be online can decide if it is truly in violation of guidelines. Offer a point or two to the TC for each question that they monitor so that people will actually be motivated to do it. Maybe just add a button they can click on: Yes this is a violation, or No, its not. And if you want, make it so 2 or more of the TCs have to agree that its a violation before its deleted.
As always, keep the appeal thing intact. Maybe the first appeal could go to the TCs again (but have something in place so that the original TCs can´t vote again on the same question/answer). And if they are still found in violation and STILL want to appeal, then it can go to you guys for the final call. It would make your jobs a lot easier.
Don’t worry everyone. The people that are saying other’s questions or answers are stupid and need banned may be self-rightous or self-serving. Who knows what kind of personality disorders they may have or maybe they criticize others for lack of personality themselves.
More often than not, the closets of these “holier than thou” people are where you will find the most bones! F’ them.
There shouldn’t be an automatic suspension of a post. Also, there should be a way for yahoo to know if a person is abusing it by logging on different account. Logging the ip address would do this.
The system is broken. Difference in opinion is not abuse but the system is set up to exploit that. If you want to live in happy happy land, don’t get on the Internet. The world is not always a happy place.