Expert: Katie - 10/18/2006

Question
I received negative feedback from a person who submitted three
different questions on three occasions, which I properly and
timely answered.
The last question was worded vaguely and not in proper English.
I told him I did not fully understand his question and I guessed
what it was as best I could, and he gave me negative feedback.
I do not feel I should have received such feedback especially
after answering him on two followups, and is lack of syntax.
His name is Lee Maynard and it was a question about food
history in the Central & South America History Category.

Answer
Our policy prevents us from changing ratings.

We get several requests to remove negative ratings each week. It is just not fair to the other experts who asked before whom we said "no" to. It is also unfair to the
thousands of other volunteers on our site who do not ask.

No need to worry, though. We throw out outliers when we calculate your stats, so as long as the rest of your ratings are good, this one won't appear in your public profile or affect your average ratings. You will only see it in your Recently Answered Questions Page which no one else sees.

Here's how to avoid similar situations like these in the future: If you receive a question that does not make sense,  you can use the "Explain to the Questioner why you can't answer this question" option in the gray box on the "Answer Question" page to respond to the question and remove it from your pending queue. This way, the questioner will not be able to rate your response.

Hope this helps
and thanks for volunteering,
Katie
AllExperts.com