Why is it that everytime I try to answer a question in geneaology Yahoo! says they are taking a breather?

Question

This only happens in the genealogy section, which is why I am posting it in genealogy. Most days I go to Polls, Philosophy, Politics or some other area because every single time I try to answer a question in genealogy once I click "Submit" it says "We are taking a breather...". If Yahoo! is taking a breather, nothing should work!

Answer 1

lol don't worry your not alone on this one

it happens a lot to me, and sometimes

i can't wait around for it to clear.

Answer 2

I'll be back in a minute.  I'm taking a breather.

Answer 3

Known new glitches due to updates: "Breather" screen can result from: Percent signs (or other symbols)  in q&a, hitting daily limit when answering, posting over 4 links per answer/question, leaving answer screen open for over 3 minutes. Also the + sign is 'eaten' in questions, question may have been deleted, you  may be blocked by ther person, posting the same link repeatedly, etc.

Possible fixes: Eliminate the symbols, shorten the answer, wait until after midnight Pacific time (for daily limit issue), click BACK & try again, click F5 & try again, clear your cache & reboot, post a short answer & update with the longer answer (Warning: this may earn you a ‘placeholding’ violation, though!), remove links, go to another English site, another category, be patient.

Answer 4

That is SO frustrating, I've gotten it a lot lately, too!

I found a previous Yahoo!Answer that gave me the answer to why it kept happening to me, and I hope this will help you.

It has to do with the content of your answer.  Either:

a)  you have a character they don't allow, or

b)  you've provided a source URL that is VERY common (it happened to me recently when providing Wikipedia as a source to one of my Genealogy answers).  I've found that if I change the source URL by putting "(dot)" instead of "." then my answer will be submitted.  

For example:  put "ancestry(dot)com" rather than "ancestry.com".

I hope that helps!

Answer 5

Yes, use of the percentage sign always does this.

(And I thought it was The Famous Family curse put upon my family when they had a run-in with The Mighty Yamster back in 1648. Maybe we should still compare surname lists in our family trees to determine who the culprit was...)

Answer 6

If they are taking a breather, then they have COPD or something, cause it isn't just you.  I don't write short answers, so when I lost 3 of them today, I got disgruntled.  And no, only one of them had a link.  

Answer 7

I KNOW it sucks. I have a question I want to ask dammit.

And the stupid spell check and popups on the side are VERY annoying

I can answer questions but it won't let me ask a question. This sucks!

Answer 8

It happens to me, too. Last night I tried to submit an answer TWICE, and lost the information because I got the "breather" response, or the "page couldn't be found." So, the next time when I couldn't refresh the page, I minimized one window and opened another, and it worked fine. What's going on???

Answer 9

It happens to ma all the time, and it drives me nuts.

Answer 10

It's not just with Y!A.

I tried to send a mass e-mail to 15 people, 5 times today, and got the "breather" notice, every single time!

Answer 11

I've noticed it too - enough so that I now try to CTRL+A to select All, then CTRL+C to copy before I click on "Preview", so I don't lose 10 - 15 minutes of work on an answer.

It happened to me in Community Service at least once. It happens to me in Genealogy quite a bit. Seems to have started after the last revision.

It may have to do with your (and my) exalted status. My "Best Answers" total hasn't gone beyond 1875 for a week or more, although I get one or two a day.

Answer 12

If you have a percentage sign in your answer, take it out.  It's a bug. I wonder if the Yahoo people know about it?

Answer 13

all i can say is keep trying and maybe it will get through, if you're still having this problem then I would suggest reporting it to YA