And I'm maxed out again. I can't wait till level 2!

The problem with these types of things is that when it comes to anything technical, like coding, it's the blind leading the blind. I think it's especially bad with coding though because everyone who knows HTML or knows enough of a language to hook up two things some other people wrote thinks they are an expert. Usually the stupidest answer is chosen as the best one and 30 other people chime in what a perfect solution it was.

It's generally something that only technically works and only in one tiny test case. Sort of the equivalent of someone asking "How to I drive a car?" choosing an answer describing how to rig a car up so you can lay on the roof and maneuver down the road using a system of ropes and pulleys, except with no breaking system in place, as the best, then 30 other people saying how brilliant that is.

OMG! I was trying to drive from under the car by yanking on the axles! UR AWESOME!!

These things work out for the better because many times you can phrase your search as a question and find someone asking the exact same thing.

I hate you for posting this link.

I got enough top answers out of my binging to get to level 2. Now I can rate other people's answers with a thumbs up or down. And you know I'll be giving 10 downs for every up. Answers Regulators, mount up!

I've been level two for about a week now, it got me cocky. I answered some question without giving an answer, got reported, appealed, won, and now I get another message that it was deleted and they took my points away.

I did re-edit the response to say something like, "no answer, sorry" so I got reported again. Jerks.

What is your name on Y!Answers?

Here's a tip on getting more top answers- go back through your previous answers and find all of the ones that are "in voting." Vote for yourself.

I did that today (there were some that were a week old with no results) and got 6 of them to come back as best answer within minutes. Cheating? No, I was the only poster to many of them.

Goooooood answering!

I guess it is Alex S

I tried the self vote on a couple of mine, that's a good tip.

Do you guys care at all about actually helping people with their questions or are you just in it for the meaningless points?

No, I truly enjoy helping some of these people, although a good amount of the questions I answer are hypothetical "what do you think of..." questions.

It is time-consuming to find the questions that aren't a) middle-school relationship advice b) teenage homework questions that google could answer in 3.4 seconds or c) high-school relationship advice

I don't know why kids that age even ask for advice, they are completely different from everyone else and no one could ever understand their love.

I've found plenty of history ones. You just have to click on the subcategories to the left of the screen and chose.

It would appear that no one has taught these kids that when you type out a math problem parenthesis matter.

1/x-1+1/2 = 1/x^2+2 Solve!

I usually start off on the home page just browsing the latest questions, and then if I get into a good category I'll stay there for awhile. There are a ton of garbage questions though.


I do it for the chicks.

I was looking through to possibly answer some programming type questions, but generally the people don't know enough to know what to ask (I need to HTML my website, where do I begin? Where to begin indeed.), or they are asking something that would require a 10,000 word answer when they really just need to read the manual of whatever crappy tool they bought and are asking about.

I have to check this out now. Thanks, just what I needed to do.

To nit pick, parentheses do matter, but they aren't completely necessary if it's written where the order of operations naturally takes care of the groupings.
So basically, you can tell them they need parentheses, but you're taking the risk that some 13 year old will then be making fun of you on their website for not realizing that their problem didn't require them.

Then again, I'm one to over parenthesize to make things more clear.

Just got to level three. Time to get back to work...

Let's just assume I'm not retarded and that I'm talking about situations where they almost assuredly do apply somewhere.

Hey- you two... get a (math) room.

Apology accepted. Thanks for realizing you were wrong.

Anyone one of you guys edit Wiki enough to add a picture for me for one of my clients?