Points act as a reputation system on the Q&A, rewarding you for making good contributions to the site. Points also unlock extra privileges, such as voting and posting on walls.
You can see how many points you have by clicking your username and viewing "Activity by...":
Note that your points total is DIFFERENT for each section! Any score you earn on the main section is not transferable to Meta or RMT, and vice versa. This can create the illusion that your points total is changing for no reason — rest assured that's not happening.
Here are all the ways you can gain (or lose) points:
- All users receive +20 points for creating an account, given in all three sections.
- If your question or answer is up-voted, you'll receive +10 points.
- If your question or answer is down-voted, you'll be penalised −10 points.
- Having your answer selected as the best awards you +20 points, unless you were also the author of the question.
- For every question you have with a 'best answer' selected, you receive +2 points.
- For down-voting a post, you will get −2 points. (This helps discourage unmeaningful and excessive down-voting.)
The system above is the same on every section of the site. Some of its deeper intricacies are as follows:
- You can gain a maximum of 200 points from up-votes on one post. If your post receives a 21st up-vote or more, you won't receive any additional points from it.
- You can lose a maximum of 40 points from down-votes on one post. If your post receives a 5th down-vote or more, you won't lose additional points from it.
- If somebody removes their vote or de-selects the best answer from a post, then all the points involved in that exchange will be removed.
- Any points gained or lost on a post are retained if it is hidden, unless it was a best answer; in that case, both the +20 points and +2 points are foregone.
- Hidden posts with no dependent posts beneath them are deleted periodically by the site admin, in which case all point changes involving those posts are cleared with them.
