If I start Yahoo! Answers with a new account, and get the maximum number of points per day...?

You might want to rephrase your question. Because if you can spend up to 12 hours total doing voting or answers at the same rate per hour, then once you can answer over 30*12= 360 questions per day, it makes sense to spend all of your time only answering questions as it gives you more points than voting. I'll assume though that you mean "up to 12 hours answering questions, and up to 12 hours voting". Also, you can't do up to 12 hours of voting at any level since you never get higher than 100 votes per day, so we'll just assume "do the maximum amount of votes too".

Let's also assume the following (which I suspect some people are going to be leaving out):

- You don't get any "thumbs-up" ratings on your best-voted answers

- A new account starts off with 100 points (which they do)

- BIG assumption here: If you get to a new level during the day, the maximum allowed answers or votes doesn't kick in until the following day. In other words, if you started the day at level 3, and use up your daily maximum amount of answers to get to level 4 along the way, you still can't go beyond the number of answers allowed for level 3 that day. Again, big assumption, but this is going to make the calculations much easier. Plus it shouldn't affect the accuracy too greatly.

- After finishing a 12 hour stretch, there will be enough time before this session and the next day when Yahoo realizes a "new day" has passed and you can start answering questions again (I don't know what exactly Yahoo considers a "next day")

- We'll neglect the one point you get per day from logging in

- We don't have to wait more than a day for answers to get voted "best"

- None of the answers are reported for insulting participants, posting "I don't know", obvious point gaming, and other things that could (and should) get reported.

Starting a new account with 100 points, using the maximum amount of votes and answers per day, you can get (20 answers)*2 + 20 votes = 60 points per day. A 50% best answer success rate (which is pretty high) gives you another 10*10 = 100 points. So that brings the total up to 260 on the first day. This means you can reach level 2 in one day. (And again, as mentioned earlier: we'll assume that you can't continue answering more questions until tomorrow, even though we already reached level 2).

At level 2, in one day you can answer 40 questions (80 points), vote on 40 questions (40 points), and get 50% of your questions voted "best of" (10*20=200). So you get 320 points each day. Adding this to 160 gives you 480 points at the end of the second day, 800 at the end of the 3rd, and 1120 at the end of the 4th. This brings you to level 3.

Starting the 5th day at level 3 you get 60*2 + 60 + (30*10) = 480 points per day. After 3 days (a total of 7 days since the start), you get 480*3 = 1440 points, or 2560 total. This brings you up to level 4. That's when you have 80 answers and 80 votes, or an additional 80*2 + 80 + (80/2)*10 = 640 points to get per day. After 4 days (11 days total) this brings you up to 5,120 points.

At level 5 the number of answers are unlimited, so using the 12 hour rule you get 30*12*2 + 80 votes + (30*12/2)*10 best of points = 2,600 points per day. It only takes 2 days (13 days total) to get up to 10,320 points, pushing you over the mark into level 6.

Once you get up to 10,000 points, you're allowed unlimited answers and 100 votes per day. From there, you need an additional 10^6 - 10,320 = 989,680 points. If you can answer 30 questions per hour at 12 hours per day, then you get 30*12*2 = 720 points per day from just answering questions. If 50% of these get a "best vote", then that's an additional (720/2)*10 = 3600 points. Since you actually can't do 30 votes per hour for 12 hours, again I'll just assume you want to do the maximum 100 votes per day. These are worth one point each. So adding everything up, you'll get 720 + 3600 + 100 = 4,420 points per day.

Dividing 989,680 by 4,420 gives you approximately 223.90. Add this to the 13 days you've spent getting up to level 6, and it means a total of about 230 days, which is roughly 7 and a half months.

A lot of this depends on the 50% success rate for best answers, which is probably the most unrealistic thing about any of these assumptions.

If you get like 3 thumbs up each day that is 3 points and the point for logging in. So 4 points a day so far. Then 150+50 is 200 an hour. For the first level you can only do 20 answers per day so the first day you would have 204 points. The next day you will have 408 points and you would be lv 2. On lv 2 you can get 274 points a day. 3 days later you will get lv 3 with 1,096 points. Now you can make a maximum of 424 points a day. In 4 days you will be lv 4 with 2,792 points. Now you can get 564 points a day. In 4 more days you will be lv 5 with 5,048 points. Now you get 2,244 In 3 more days you will be lv 6 with 11,780 points. Now you get 2,264 points a day for lv 6 and 7. 436 days later you should have about 1,000,000 points. So it would take 448 days or 1 year and 3 months. Don't forget there is a hundred points!! You will be 100 closer than all of this sorry I forgot to add.

login point each day?

what about thums up rating?

raj has missed two above facts.

each day for login to yahoo answers you are awarded with 1 point

assume 4 thums up for each best answer

points per day =12*[15*10 + 30*2 + 30 + 15*4] + 1 =12*300 + 1= 3601

reqd. no of days = 1,000,000/3601 = 277.7 days

around 9 months

points per day=12*[15*10+30*2+30]

=12*240=2880

no of days for 1,000,000 points

=1,000,000/2880

=347.22 days

almost a year

about as long as it would take me to figure this out!

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try and tell me.. i'll need that ..