On Monday I told you about one of my answers on Yahoo! Answers Astronomy & Space being deleted.   Well, it appears that I am indeed the target of a campaign of censorship, because today I received this:

Hello AstroGeek <redacted>

You have posted content to Yahoo! Answers in violation of our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. As a result, your content has been deleted. Community Guidelines help to keep Yahoo! Answers a safe and useful community, so we appreciate your consideration of its rules.

Question: is the world really going to end in 2012?

Question Details: i heard that from 2 friends.

Deleted Answer: campbelp2002 is right, there is nothing to worry about. My daughter also hears this at school. The “2012 doomsday” is a hoax. It’s a fraud. It’s a con job. It’s a cruel and cynical lie being promoted by unscrupulous pseudo-scientific cranks who have a monetary interest: They want to sell their books, videos, ’survival kits’, and spaces in non-existent shelters in Antarctica, and to divert attention from the fact that they have been wrong so many times before. It’s also being pushed by people who are promoting a Hollywood disaster movie due out later this year. All of the claims of ‘predictions’ by the Maya, the Aztecs, the Chinese (I Ching), Nostradamus, Sir Isaac Newton, Edgar Cayce, “Mother Shipton” are false: they did not make the claimed predictions. Predictions by others such as José Argüelles, Terrence McKenna, Nancy Leider, Mark Hazelwood and others are contrived pseudo-scientific nonsense. There is no “Planet X” or Nibiru. If someone claims that this object exists, then many regulars in this forum have been asking for the RA/Dec coordinates for it. If they can provide those coordinates and allow independent verification of its existence, then they can collect $5,000 from http://nibiruchallenge.blogspot.com. There will be no ‘pole shift’, either geographic or magnetic. There will be no ‘killer solar flares’. There is no ‘Photon Belt’. These events are fiction. There will be no ‘galactic alignment’ or ‘planetary alignment‘ of any kind, and we will not pass through the central plane of the galaxy, and even if these events were to occur, they would not cause any problems for us. As far as what is *really* going to happen: Olympic games in London Leap Year U.S. Presidential election Transit of Venus on June 6th Disclaimer: Due to the number of “2012″ questions on Yahoo! Answers, this is a cut-and-paste answer. Please see my complete (long) opinion in the first link below. After reading that link, if you have additional questions, please leave a comment and I will reply shortly: http://astrogeek.wordpress.com/hoax/ http://365daysofastronomy.org/2009/04/27/april-27th-will-the-world-end-in-2012/ http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/19/no-doomsday-in-2012/ http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/planet-x-and-2012-primer-on-the-mayan-calendar/ http://blogs.discovery.com/cosmic_ray/2009/01/day-of-the-come.html http://www.dailycommonsense.com/2012-explained-why-it-shouldnt-be-feared/ EDIT: Ah, I see thumbkin is back. Where’ya been guy?

Violation Reason:Solicitation

If you feel this content was removed in error, please read the Community Guidelines and make sure that this content: 1. respects the question-answer format and is not chatty or personal communication; 2. does not contain non-relevant links to external sites or other questions and does not promote your own blog or website; 3. is respectful to other people and does not offend other community members. If you still believe this content has been removed in error, please contact Customer Care and tell us why.

Regards,
Yahoo! Customer Care

So, apparently I can answer questions as long as I don’t point people to this site.  Interesting…

What I take from this is that someone really doesn’t like my 2012 hoax page.   The only consolation I can take from this is that A) The answer generated an email to the question asker with my content in it and B) that when I appeal they will ‘lose influence in the community’.

Yippie.

Yes, I have appealed, and no, I haven’t heard anything about my appeal of Monday’s deletion.