Anyone care to take the time to explain Private to me?

Question

If there is a set of rules somewhere I am suposed to read please let me know. If not please explain the whole private thing. I would ask Rachael but our schedules conflict. This is another one I just do not understand. You can be kind, you can be sarcastic, just use simple language as i am not completely computer literate. It could be to all of your benifit if I knew what I was doing though.

Answer 1

Basically, what Heather said.

If you click on "My Profile" in the upper right-hand part of the page, you'll see your profile.  Then click on Edit my Info up near the top of the page.  You'll see several options, if you tick off the boxes saying "hide my Q&A" and "hide my network" (or some such) you can keep people who are not your contacts from seeing who your contacts are and what questions and answers you post.  

(You can make someone a contact by clicking on their profile.)

If you are being harassed by someone, or just don't like someone, and don't want to block them outright...  Or if you just aren't sure you want people you don't know finding out about everything you do on Yahoo!Answers...  you might make either or both private just to limit how much others can find out about your activities here.  

Making your Q&A private keeps people from being able to easily track what you say in different posts, and where else you might be posting here.

Making your Network private keeps people from finding out who you associate with.  (For instance, if I was one of your contacts, but you didn't want someone who hated me knowing that, you might make your Network private.)  

I hope that helps.  If you have more specific questions, feel free to e-mail me or post additional details.

Edited to Add:  Just to clarify, the only thing making your Q&A private really does is keep people from clicking on your Profile to get a list of all your questions and answers.  (This is true even after things are resolved.  It won't show up on your profile page.)  Your questions and answers will always show up if people look at them directly.  (Unless you have someone blocked.)  So making it Private just keeps people from following you around all over using your profile.

Answer 2

Private to me means that when you tell someone something it is not to go any further than the two of you. I hope that this helps you out!!

Answer 3

You can set your Qs and As to private so nobody can go back and read them.  You can do this from your profile page

Answer 4

I am a total techno dummy and admitted it the other day answering a question.  Someone took pity on me and sent info on how to do this.  

click on your avatar (the little picture of you).  That will take you to a page, that more or less in the middle has a box with blue writing.  In that box, you have two choices.  Click on Edit my Info.  A new page will come up that is pretty easy to understand.  After that, confirm your settings by clicking on OK.  If I can do it you can too.

Private, as I understand it, means that other people cannot see the questions that you have asked or easily get a complete list of the questions that you have answered.  However, once a question is "Resolved" it gets saved and anyone has access to it...including the answer that you gave.