This sucks because yes its a mistake or no its not a mistake both fit

they don't fit, because 'yes' was not supposed to be used in the context of 'yes it is a mistake', yea was. Having two words helped stop that ambiguity.

	▲	card_zero an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's confusing because it was stated wrongly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no#The_Early_English_f... Yes contradicts the negative question. So "Is this not a mistake?" should be contradicted with "yes, it is a mistake" or affirmed with "no, it is not a mistake". It's further confusing because we have the idiom of suggesting things politely in a tentative manner such as isn't this a mistake? which has lost its sense of negativity and has come to mean "this is a mistake, I think," as opposed to being parsed literally to mean "this is not-a-mistake, I think".