why do you get points in Yahoo answers (should be renamed to yahoo questions)?

The points are an incentive scheme which draws you into the site and provides and inventive to keep coming back.

All they do allow users to increase their quotas of questions/answers per account so they don't actually have any value outside of Y!A itself.

You can read here about how you earn/lose points, and the quota's per level /info/scoring_system

As for Yahoo Questions/ Yahoo Answers - it all depends on how you look at it. Questions are important but they would soon dry up unless there were any Answers, and questions are measured by how many / the quality of answers they receive.

Though you can't trade points for prizes,points are for levels and give you another reason to answer questions.You get deducted 5 points when you ask questions,but you get 3 points back if you choose best answer.Choosing best answer is good as it shows your gratitude,plus the user gets 10 points which could perhaps make their day.

And it is called YA for a reason,so no to your question.