The question Amanda answered was
"My company is getting rid of old PCs and I’m considering buying one. They have completely wiped out the hard drive, so there is no OS installed at all. Previously it had Windows Me or 2000 on it (not sure which). Is it going to be foolish of me to think I can buy Windows XP and install it myself? What kind of problems can I expect to run into?"

She recommended downloading Ubuntu and trying the live CD as if it worked it would save the cost of buying Office, XP etc. for what would soon become an under-powered machine.

What makes people think that Ubuntu is harder to install than getting drivers working under XP?

Did anyone even read the original article? I think her recommendation is within bounds. The user received a free PC without any CDs. Microsoft does not believe in transferring of licenses without any official documentation. So, user is stuck. To reinstall == buy XP. The blogger just said, if you buy XP, you won't get Office or anything else, why don't you try the ubuntu livecd and see if you like it.

What's so off topic about it?

I would like to thank Yahoo as we do not want to tarnish the purity of the Master OS with Vole brainwashed users.

If Yahoo was so gung-ho about Microsoft why did they buy Zimbra? Microsoft hates Zimbra and it is a direct competitor of theirs.

When a person asks a question, you can: a) answer it in a helpful way or b) shut the f*** up!

If I'd ask "hey people, what's best place to get my Toyota fixed" and someone answered "buy BMW" I'd say it would also be sanctioned as offtopic. And at the same time noone would call Yahoo (or any other site running the board) as pro-BMW, anti-japanese etc.

This is main reson why I despise people like this Amanda penguin-wannabe..

"Amanda Kerik responded to a problem that a user was having with their Windows machine that since they had to do a re-install they might as well install Ubuntu Linux."

From where I'm standing, this looks like a holier-than-thou linux twit doing what they do best: Ignoring the question asked and spitting, "Install linux!" as the answer to everything.

My best guess is that the TOS violation had to do with answering the question asked rather than evangelizing your point of view.

I agree with sfinXters.
The questioner just wanted to know if it would be easy to install XP, not anything else.

Go to Yahoo Music Videos. Try to watch fullscreen using anything but Internet Explorer. You can't do it. They are even bold enough to tell you: Fullscreen only available with I.E.

As I love to dualboot to Linux, I hate answers from pro-linux geeks that completle throw the topics off. One thing is to recommend a solution to repair/reinstall a faulty OS, another is to flame on the thread with "go Linux" stuff. If I was a moderator at Yahoo I wouldn't spare that post too.
Not all users can adapt painlessly to a completly different OS. And judging by the topic itself, it seems this one was not a techie/geek that loves to experiment.

If you want to be helpfull with a penguin recommendation - you could point out that Linux is a handy tool at restoring Windows installations. It can be used for virus cleanning, boot recovery and so on. In fact I've recovered several Windows' by just deleting the faulty drivers from the fs under a Knoppix live-cd.

So yes - she had been properly moderated for a flaming post. No big deal there ;)

I can't find (maybe I haven't looked hard enough) what the actual original question was. I think that's important.

I have to agree that there is very little more aggravating than asking for help about "how to do X" and being told "you shouldn't, do Y instead." (And for the record, I myself replaced XP with Ubuntu last year and am starting to see why so many linux users eventually turn into irritating, maniacal zealots.) On the other hand, if the question was something like "my XP box is hosed and I just need to do word processing, what are my options?", her response wouldn't necessarily have been off topic.

Again, without the actual original question, I just don't know.

I think the most important thing here is that it sounds, from the few posts I slogged through, as if Yahoo never condescended to explain anything to her, instead just foisting her off with the usual dismissal of "it violated the terms of service." And if nothing else, that's a grossly insulting thing to do under any circumstance. Dubious conspiracy theories aside, I do think that the polite and proper thing for Yahoo to have done was point out how and/or why the answer violated the terms of service.

Yahoo was also one of the companies that helped put poeple in jail in Chana a few years ago. Thats why I never use Yahoo and use Google. Google is for democracy not one of the Facsist group.

Here's the question (at the end of the post) - http://amandakerik.wordpress.com/2007/06/25/yahoo-open-source-censorship-an-actual-response/

The person asked about what problems he/she could encounter if installing XP by her/himself. And in stead of an answer got open sauce propoganda. Yahoo was right this time.