text: The Yahoo! Gods have answered our prayers and seen fit to restore her...\n\nPractically speaking, I've often suspected that a lot of Yahoo!'s suspensions are automated. Probably whenever somebody reports abuse, it's added to a database, and after someone gets a certain number of reports, the computer automatically shuts down the account. This, of course, tilts the scales against long-term and well-known users, because sooner or later someone will report you. I think the system really prefers semi-anonymous figures who ask fact-based questions that don't require thought and give fact-based answers that don't show thought. Mediocrity wins out in the end.\n\nTwo suggestions I could make to Yahoo! would be to counterweigh abuse reports with the time someone's been on the site - someone who's amassed 20 abuse reports in 12 hours is clearly more of a threat than someone who's amassed 20 abuse reports over several months - and to offer some kind of counterbalance to abuse reports - something to accentuate the positive and not just the negative, like on eBay where feedback on a user can be positive or negative.\n\nBut Yahoo! is a private company and has the right to behave however they want... Our two choices are to accept it or walk away...\n\n----------\n\n(edit: A better question is why they haven't suspended someone like Sara F, who gives answers as ignorant as the one above...)