February 11, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Answering good questions is the secret to leveling up!
When visiting Answers, there are three main ways to engage with the members of the community: you can ask a question, answer a question, or vote.
By now, you’ve figured out that asking a question costs you points, and answering a question awards you points. But did you know that you can also earn a point by voting on an answer?
“How do I earn (or lose) points?”
- Give a best answer: earn 10 points
- Answer a question: earn 2 points
- Vote for an answer: earn 1 point
- Ask a question: lose 5 points
- Violate the community guidelines: lose 10 points
When participating on the site, a few tips will help you move from level to level in no time—they are:
- Provide Best Answers—be sure your answers are quality, don’t violate the Community Guidelines and answer the question!
- Search for your question before you ask it: while your question may seem unique, you may be shocked just how many people before you have come to Answers to ask “Why is the sky blue?” – Save your 5 points and use the Advanced Search feature to check the site for similar questions before asking your own.
- Use the “Sort” feature to find questions with the fewest answers—by filtering by the fewest answers you’re naturally “upping your odds” of earning a “Best Answer” as you’ll have fewer other answers to compete against, and, may be providing someone with the perfect answer!
With these tips under your belt, you’ll be at level 7 in no time! Happy answering!
– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team
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- Comments (3)
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Brilliant tips, I would never have thought about sorting questions by the least answers.
You seem to be encouraging point gaming, which is a violation of the guidelines. If it means questions with no answers actually get halfway decent answers, well and good. But it is more likely they’ll get non-answers. Call me cynical, but I’ve been on here for 3 years. Let me say that I deplore the latest change you’ve made to the Top 10s – real-time updates. Gentlemen, you risk turning Answers into a game. Already I am seeing the point-gaming users respond to this change, and it is not good for Answers. Please reverse this change.
It’s nice to know Y!A wants users to excel at using the site for the greater good…., I would have posted the blog reading,
>>by filtering by the fewest answers you’re not only “upping your odds for best answer” but also tidying up the loose ends that could otherwise disillusion users with evidence and then thoughts of a less helpful community….’
Luckily there’s already something for just that
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yah00AnswersTieBusters/
…so if you sort by ‘fewest’, you’ll also take some of the strain off TieBusters too…