Yahoo Answers

Now I hang out a lot on Yahoo! Answers. It's a great way to kill a little time and lets me help others by sharing what I've learned in my time on this planet. I'm awesome with freshwater aquariums and with computers and have a jack-of-all-trades level of knowledge in most other things.

Y!A has a feature where you can report a question or an answer if it fails to fall within the community guidelines. If it's insulting, if it's illegal, if it's spam, etc...you can report it.

Now since Y!A is huge and has hundreds of questions asked every hour...there is no way you can have people checking out each and every report out there. So they have it set that anyone who has a history of righteous reports of people who are really naughty can report and the reported question or answer will be removed then and there. Without human intervention. If you are the one that was pulled and you think it's unfair you can appeal it and someone will look it over. However if you appeal and you're still in the wrong...you get even more points deducted.

This is great for pulling the people who ask things like "Is it OK to feed kittens to my Pit Bull?" and other obnoxious questions like that. But there is a darker side. Someone with the good karma can say "I think this guy is an idiot" and report their answer and it'll vanish faster than a fart in a hurricane. This is what happened to me.

Someone asked about how long would it take to download something through the BitTorrent protocol. A game in fact. So I answered and explained how it works, what can influence download speed (giving a nice link to an animated GIF that explains it) and pointing out that getting a game like that is piracy at best and at worst can be filled with tons of malware and/or viruses and that it would be in their best interest to buy a legal copy of the game.

Someone did not like that and reported me. Answer and 10 points vanished.

So I appealed and explained all the points of my answer and why I didn't think that it was fair that it was removed. Funny thing? 5 hours later someone looked at the appeal and said "Whoops! That answer is not against the Community Guidelines" and restored it and my points.

Even funnier was the fact that the person who reported me sent me an e-mail and gloated. So I reported him for harassment. Funny thing? I checked just now and his account is listed as being suspended.

As Mark Hamil once said in his role of Cock-Knocker in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"...

"Don't fuck with the Jedi Master, son."