I never found anonymous answers to be nearly as big an issue as the questions. They didn't seem to get as much distribution. Questions are intended to go looking for answers, and thus got spread widely; anonymous answers of poor quality would be downvoted and disappear.<p>The site was vastly improved by removing anonymous questions. The use case was extremely narrow: a generic question would already be asked ("How do I get away from a violent boyfriend?") and specific ones risked violating anonymity ("How do I get away from a violent boyfriend in zip code XXXXX?")<p>I suspect that the replacement of anonymous answers is more about streamlining the code -- eliminating a whole separate case that has to be tested and maintained -- than about improving the site.<p>But even if the use case for anonymous answers was more realistic than for anonymous questions, it was practically never used that way. It was almost always trolling. Among the Top Writers, practically none were sad to see it go.
Quite a shame. Not my preferred Q&A platform, but to inhibit people from writing answers seems not a smart move. Perhaps this is a quality initiative, but it probably won't shift demographics.