Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

We often see questions coming up on Answers around, what are the points for and what is the point of points?

You can see full details of the whole points system here, but we thought we’d go through it in more detail:

• There are two main points to points. Firstly, we want to encourage quality participation by awarding points. Secondly, we want to give everyone the ability to know thoughtful and dedicated contributors at a glance. You can generally assume that a Level 7 user is a valuable contributor to Answers.

• Additionally, by gaining points you can open up more features on Answers. For example, at Level 2 you gain the right to rate answers, and at each level increase up to Level 5 you gain the right to ask, answer and vote more times on a daily basis.

So how can you go about gaining more points?

• You gain points in Answers by answering questions, voting on the best answers to other people’s questions, and rating the quality of best answers that already have been chosen by others. Additionally you gain a point every time you visit Answers.

• Asking questions “costs” points: each question “costs” five points to ask, but you gain three of those points back when you choose the best answer. We imposed the “cost” when we noticed that some people were spewing out meaningless “questions” just for the sake of earning points, without any intention of picking the best answer. To allow everyone to ask a question from the outset, we give you a free 100 points just for signing up.

Here is the detailed pointage rundown:

So what do points make? Level increases of course!

On Answers, as you reach increasingly higher point totals, you’re rewarded with the status of being on “Level 2,” “Level 3,” and so forth. As you reach these levels you gain more privileges on Answers and special “thank you’s”!

Here are how many points you need to reach each level, and the daily maximum number of questions/answers/comments:

We hope this clarifies the need for points on Answers a little bit more, and if you have any suggestions how we can take this further, just add a comment to let us know.

–Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team