The Scrub's alter ego (some weakling named "Jeffrey") frequents Yahoo! Answers' Credit section for a number of reasons.
1. It is good publicity for Credit Report Scrub.
2. It gives the Scrub ideas about what topics to write about.
3. It gives the Scrub's alter ego a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling to help people with no clue about credit/debt stuff.
The Scrub could go on and on.
The Scrub's alter ego has been highly successful on Yahoo! Answers' Credit Section in the past month, going from level 1 to level 5 and obtaining "Top Contributor" status. Furthermore, the Scrub's alter ego is on the verge of becoming a "Top Ten" contributor in the Credit section, and carries a "Best Answer" percentage of over 50%.
The Scrub is proud of his weak, passive-aggressive alter ego.
However, Yahoo! Answers is not without its flaws. As such, it is time for the Scrub to weigh in on these ridiculous flaws in the Yahoo! Answers system.
1. The forum is quite buggy
The Scrub's alter ego cannot tell you how many times he has written a thoughtful response to a question only to get an error message when he goes to submit. This gets old after awhile. And for some reason, in a forum about Credit you cannot use a "%" sign in your answer without getting an error message. Yeah, how often does THAT come up when discussing credit?
2. Questioners pick a wrong answer as the best answer because they are too stupid to know the difference
The Scrub's alter ego will get involved in what he calls an "answer free-for-all" where you have several "Top Contributor" answerers feuding over what the right answer is. On one side you will have the Scrub's alter ego and a few others answering the question correctly with sources to back it up. On the other side you have a few questioners telling the questioner what he wants to hear. Then the questioner will pick the answer that he wanted to hear instead of the correct answer.
So that means when someone later on searches for an answer to that question, that person will come across a wrong answer because of some stupid person looking solely for validation of their own beliefs. This just piles on more misinformation/disinformation in the credit/debt industry, and it makes the Scrub and his alter ego vomit a little when he sees it happen in real time.
3. Other top contributors, including the guy currently on top (Spifiman1), will copy your answer and then have their friends vote for them instead of you
The Scrub and his alter ego get furious at this. Even the Scrub's alter ego has cursed the name of Spifiman1 many times over the past few weeks. (For great effect, it helps to go outside in the middle of a rainstorm and bellow the name "SPIIIIFFFFFFIIIIIIMMMMMAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN111111111111111111111!")
It works like this: The Scrub's alter ego will answer a question nobody else was bothered to answer, and then a few days will pass. Then, right before it goes into voting, some jerk will copy and paste the Scrub's alter ego's answer as his own, rearrange a few words, and then get the best answer.
It is called "answer ganking", and it should be a criminal offense that carries the death penalty. (Who calls it "answer ganking"? The Scrub calls it "answer ganking", that's who calls it "answer ganking")
And apparently, this type of thing is allowed because it happens all the time...and not just to the Scrub's alter ego either.
4. The forum moderators are awful
This extends a bit on the point made in number 3. The Scrub's alter ego reports stuff like "answer ganking" and "solicitations" and "spam" to the community moderators regardless of how "important" the person doing it is to the community.
Yes, the Scrub's alter ego reports people for stealing his answers. Nothing ever happens when these things are reported, either.
5. The forum is spammed all the time
Awful moderators always leave a forum open to spam, and Yahoo! Answers is buried in it more often than not.
6. Many of the answerers are stupid jerks
The Scrub has no problem with jerks, per se, but the Scrub's alter ego does because he is a weak-willed passive-aggressive loser.
But both the Scrub and his alter ego have problems with stupid jerks. Stupid jerks rule the roost in Yahoo! Answers because they don't let petty, unimportant things like "being correct", "being informed", "having sources", "understanding subtlety" and "reading the question asked" get in the way of posting their answer (or "answer ganking" your answer).
7. Most of the answerers have deeply held beliefs about credit scoring, credit reports, etc. that are blatantly wrong
Some widely held beliefs on Yahoo! Answers include:
a. You cannot repair your credit
b. If you dispute an item and it falls off your credit report, it will always show up again in 30 days
c. Credit repair companies are legitimate and do good work for a reasonable price
d. You cannot use a debit card to make purchases online
e. If you are 30 days late on your cell phone bill, it automatically goes on your credit report regardless of who the company is, what their policies are, etc.
f. That your only source of rights in the credit/debt industry is the source the answerer knows a tiny bit about (usually a few sections of the FDCPA or the FCRA...never anything about state laws or other sections of the FDCPA/FCRA that are not briefly summarized by idiots on message boards)
g. That the FDCPA applies to original creditors
h. That using a boilerplate letter you copied off the internet (like the ones on this site) will get your dispute labeled as frivolous
Just for starters...
8. If a questioner does not like the answers he gets, he will ask the same question over and over
The Scrub's alter ego allows the Scrub to answer these questions with a pithy "Your question has already been answered" answer, complete with a link to the other six times they asked the question and got an answer they didn't like.
9. Amway/Quixtar advertises on the site
Amway/Quixtar is a disgusting multi-level marketing outfit that has survived ONLY because it is politically well-connected. The fact that other MLM outfits are shut down but Amway/Quixtar is allowed to operate is a travesty.
In the Scrub's opinion, the laws should apply equally to all. If you want to allow MLMs to operate in the US, then allow all of them to operate. If you want to ban them, ban them all.
The Scrub's pathetically worthless, passive-aggressive alter ego (the one who actually knows a guy who did Quixtar a few years ago and ended up buried in laundry detergent he was forced to buy) silently agrees.
In conclusion
The Scrub supposes that, overall, Yahoo! Answers is an excellent resource and is worth perusing. The Scrub just sees how good it already is even with its flaws, and wonders how much better it could be with just a few slight changes. Seriously, Yahoo! cannot afford to hire a moderator for each section?
Maybe these problems are limited to the Credit section of Yahoo! Answers. Maybe the Credit section is just being manipulated by a tyrannic dictatorship that needs to be overthrown and replaced with a benevolent dictatorship.
Read your Shakespeare, Spifiman1.
***For more Yahoo! Answers bashing
The Scrub has nothing but hate for Yahoo Answers
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