Why does asking questions here cost one 5 points?

Question

Is it possible to end up with a negative score? But it does give one hours of harmless amusement,

Infering that one is stupid wont earn ten points.

Thanks to all who took the trouble to answer, one will of course award the ten points when the three days expires. Its quite easy to discern the character and nature of the respondents.

Yet a peurile response like "fork off" is awarded 2 points! The which one would be inclined to think encourages bad manners and juvenile claptrap.

Answer 1

Only 5 points to pay for all that influence...! A bargain. Thanks for the 2.

Answer 2

Well, mainly because the people who programmed this are idiots =P

But if you try to see some reasons behind it, it kinda makes sense (not too much, though)

You lose five points for asking questions, but you get three back if you choose a best answer to your question. So asking questions really costs only 2 points. This is intended as a way to force people to choose a best answer, cuz otherwise people would never take the time to do it. Why bother?

I'm not saying the system is perfect, especially since you only have a certain amount of time to choose a best answer and sometimes you just forget.

And answering your other question, no, you can't end up with negative points because when you have 0 points you can't ask anything. You can only answer so many questions, etc. So basically when you get to 0, Yahoo! doesn't let you lose any more points =(
Yeah, I know, it sucks, but that's just the way it is.

Answer 3

To fully participate you should answer as well as ask questions. The 'levels' are an incentive to answer questions and gain the ability to ask and answer more questions.

There are people here (I believe) who have MPD, with several IDs. One to keep on the edge of what is tolerable and others to go way over the line. These can be banned, but they come back again like an evil phoenix.

Answer 4

Questions costs 5 points so your score lessons and then in theory encourages you to answer more questions.

I have actually seen someone with a negative score!

Answer 5

Perhaps they thought it would discourage someone, anyone from asking nonsense questions. As you can see, it didn't work. But you can get your 5 points back easily and fast by just running thru some questions and clicking thumbs up or down.

Answer 6

They have to find a way to limit the questions so that those that are open have a chance of being answered. I believe that if it were unlimited there would be so many questions that few would actually get answered.

Answer 7

Yes but if you pick a best answer to your question you get 3 points back

Answer 8

People who ask:

To make sure the people who asking question ask something meaningful or answerable question :)

People who answer:

To encourage people who answer to give better solution or view

People who view or read:

To make sure they have fun in it and continue use this

:P

Answer 9

i wanted to ask this too but couldnt afford the -5 pts it would have cost me to do so. one would figure that asking questions was a good thing, as it causes the conversations to go on and not stop; but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,
alas, its the Net and we are not as big as the Net or as big as yahoo, so whathehell.
Since yahoo is my higher pwoer, i do what it says, oh master yoda.

Answer 10

To encourage you to answer more questions. It's not really fair to just ask questions without giving feedback to other people.

Answer 11

A lot of people have asked this question before -- so I suppose that one reason that they charge you 5 points may be to discourage duplicate questions like this one. ;-)