Paul's Comments

A dear friend of mine by the name of Ben, whom I've known more than 10 years, asked me what I wrote that got me banned by Yahoo Answers. I found it, and mailed him the notice for which I was written up.

He then pointed to a line in my message. I broke one of the rules; I changed my answer in such a way to allow me to use a word that Yahoo would have censored. As a result, someone else saw it, didn't like it and reported it, and thus I got caught.

What can I say, I did wrong, I got caught. I don't know if anyone's interested, but what I was talking about in my answer was the double standard between men and women, about the hypocracy of men who would want a virgin when they get married, but something else when they have a girlfriend. And the word I used, by putting dashes between the letters - to get around Yahoo's "bad words" filter - was "slut".

And for putting it in my answer as "s-l-u-t" I got banned. And, I have to admit, I broke the rules. Thank you, Ben, for allowing me to learn something about myself.

I'll weasel out of what I said a little bit by pointing out I was using it perjoratively in the sense of how other people - some men - think of women who are "less than parsimonius" with their favors. I personally find nothing wrong with a woman who chooses to have sex with men on her terms, even if that means multiple partners or casual sex. As I see it, as long as you have standards and you don't allow yourself to be abused or mistreated there's nothing wrong with whatever way you choose to express yourself sexually with others.

What really bothered me the most about being banned by Yahoo - although being banned was bad enough - was that when I asked why, nobody would tell me. Okay, I made the mistake, but if someone had said something I would have felt better about it. It was not that I got punished that bothered me so much, and now that I know why I have to admit that I deserved getting punished, although I think having my Yahoo Answers account cancelled was a little stiff, what bothered me most was that I could not find out why. Nobody there would tell me, and every time I tried to look up the terms of service, I kept getting a "this page is busy" error.

Oh well, I may go back to Yahoo Answers at some time in the future, or I may never go back. I was up to like level 7 and had over 5,000 points, and hundreds of questions answered, lots indicated as "best answers." All gone. I've found something else fun to try. I'm answering questions as one of the people who respond for the Internet Oracle.