Jim A.

Many users are very rude and juvenile, and the quality of answers-- and questions too for that matter -- is poor. There are more trolls than there are helpful people in the politics and religion sections. The rudest and most insulting answers often get the most thumbs up.

The site could be cleaned up if Yahoo did not rely on user reporting to police the site. One higher level user can actually report and have a question deleted. And, as I imply, many users are unfair. If they don't like a question or answer they will delete it.
What happens is that racist, obscene, insulting, ridiculously childish, personal attacks, and even threatening questions and answers often remain, while perfectly innocent questions and answers are deleted.

This can be proved by a google search: keyword site: answers.yahoo.com.

What Yahoo needs to do is police the site themselves.