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Yahoo hires "magic donkeys" for tech support?

Is Yahoo! trying to change its image to "Web 2.0" - by using the standard Web 2.0 "tech support" dodge of making the users do the work?

I told my sister-in-law about the joys of storing photos on Flickr. "Here," I said helpfully, "let me show you!"

And five minutes later, she had a Yahoo identity, and Yahoo mail box, and I (basking in her admiration) switched to Flickr, and logged in. "Please log in!" it said, showing the login page again. She typed her password. Again.

"Hm," said Flickr. "You are trying to log into your hunkymouse pages using your sister-in-law identity. That won't work. You have to sign into your hunkymouse page using your hunkymouse identity."

No, she wasn't! She was signing into the sister-in-law pages. She tried again: same result. It ignored her attempt to sign into her own page, tried to sign into my page, and then said "that won't work!"

But, it added, help was at hand! - the Forum!  So we dived into the Forum and searched for login problems

As you can see if you go there, this was not encouraging. The message  describing the problem was "edited" to leave out vital information.

The official response was wrong. And

after that, the Powers That Be ignored further complaints and,

after a month, locked the page. Why?

This thread was locked automatically due of a lack of responses over the last month.

If they don't respond, they close the page for lack of response? I pointed my sister-in-law (admiration level rapidly collapsing) at the help page "contact us" form, and sent email. By return:

Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we've successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond within 7 days.

Seven days?

We'd also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

And it added:

No humans were involved in the creation of this email.

Very Web 2.0. No response from Authority, closure of the help area because of "lack of response" and finally, hiring magic donkeys instead of people? How very Technorati!