What does a rating mean when you ask a question on here? You know -2 or -5.....?

Question

for instance what does a -2 denote....explain it to me as if I'm a 10 year old please if you will......thanks!

I know that my questions cost me -5 points.........are there other questions that have -2 points taken? Confused...

My question on pertains to this Show box on here now.....it says question total rating is a -5

I mean it says" Total rating higher than -5

Answer 1

OK i will try to answer this
you ask a question -5
and answer a question +2
you choose best answer +3
so you break even.
so if you want to ask a question try to help an answer a question then you are even.
If you want more points answer a question fully, clearly and to the point so you have a better chance of getting 10 points (like i am doing here, hopefully).
Also try to help and vote for best answer ( 1 point )
If you do the math you will get there eventually
Hope that helps and thank you for asking
Rating- do not count-- you will not be penalised if you have -2 rating but if you have say +2 rating and your answer is chosen as best answer then you get and extra 2 points on top of your 10 points
OK, I find it difficult to understand exactly what you want.
There is no -2 type of question. What could have happened that you asked a question and it said altert -2 on your avator. This is a coincidence. May be you have earned 3 points from some where. For example you could have chosen best answer and then asked a question which will give a sum of -2 instead of -5

Answer 2

It's really only a matter of opinion. The 'thumbs' up or down denote what the first (up to) five people who choose to 'rate' and answer have actually plumped for, and it makes no difference to anybodys' points total at all. Yahoo changed it again a couple of days ago so that as a "surfer" you can now choose NOT to see answers which up to five or more people have already rated as "bad" - which sometimes means that they've actually voted down some quite amusing answers because they're not really suited to the question OR may simply be the more stupid "yes" or "no" answers which, without more detail, mean nothing and are therefore worthless, therefore getting the thumbs down.
You can adjust the number of 'downs' which you want to see simply by altering the number in the box. Hope this helps clear it up a bit for you !

Answer 3

The rating system has almost nothing to do with points -- at any rate, you will not lose points with the rating system. So, don't worry!

What happens is that Level 2 people and above can look at your question or your answer, and rate it -- if they think it's good, they give you a thumbs up, and if they think it's bad, they give you a thumbs down. The rating tells you how many people gave their opinion about your question or your answer.

Some people who rate, though, just have a hair up their butt or something, and rate things bad for very personal reasons (LOL, I wonder how many bad ratings I'll get for *that* comment!).

So, bad ratings don't mean much.

However, if your answer is chosen as the best answer, you get an extra point for each thumbs-up someone has given you. The thumbs-down don't count for anything.

I'm not sure how ratings affect the question itself. Maybe if a question gets a lot of thumbs-up, the guys running this site take special notice and maybe put it up for "Best Question" status. That way, more people see your question and answer it. This is just speculation, though.

You really ought to ask this at the section devoted to Yahoo internal matters. They'd probably have the answer to all this.

Answer 4

The rating system uses voters to decide how good your question is. -2 means that after the positive and negative votes have canceled each other out, the bads outnumber the goods by 2 votes. (A situation like this could be 5 good votes and 7 bad votes.)
Any question you ask makes you lose 5 points, and when you answer a question, you get two points. Voting for a best answer gets you one point, and having your answer selected as the best gets you 10 points.

Answer 5

Asking a questions= decrease your account by 5 (-5)
Answering a questions= increase your account by 2 (+2)
Entering yahoo answer by your account= increase your account by 1 (1)
If your answer choosen as the best answer= increase your account by 10 (+10).
best chance

Answer 6

I used to be confused, now I'm catatonic

Answer 7

it means that you asked a good/bad question or that someone agrees/disagrees with you