I know it's confusing >_< Partly because different people have used plus and minus signs in different ways to tackle the same subject. What we all are getting at is twist.

Here is a link to Rev's Spherculist Manifesto:
www.spherculism.net/phorum/index.php

In the first section he explains degrees of twist. I know the manifesto is a difficult read, but if you keep going back there is good stuff in there. More importantly, he has good video examples with it.
Here is the video showing degrees of twist at the wrist:
www.spherculism.net/gallery/main.php

So what he is getting at is that "1 degree" of twist is 180 degrees of rotation aka half a turn. A good analogy is if you are holding onto a steering wheel, with your hands nice and level. By giving the wheel half a turn your arms will cross each other to a 1st-degree twisted position. 2nd degree is a full turn, like how much you twist your wrists to do a 5-beat weave... so on and so forth.

Your poi and your arms are basically the same thing when it comes to spinning, in fact wile you hold your poi and spin them, it is useful to feel them as an extension of your arms (this is useful on many levels). The big difference between your arms and your poi is this: bones! Arms can only twist so much. Poi can do a lot of twisting. This is part of the premise for Loki's tangle tutorial:
www.youtube.com/watch

As Loki demonstrates, your arms crossed in a 1st-degree twist is the same as a 1st-degree tangle. By pulling your arms apart the nexus of twist moves from your arms down to the poi tethers and you get a tangle.

Moves that involve twisting and untwisting can be described in terms of the of transitions from 1 state to the next, and follow certain rules. a degree of twist is a state/position you get to and then transition from to another state. Moves we think of as "weaves", "inversions" or "hyperloops" can instead be thought of as patterns made up of a sequence of transitions from state to state.

Let me know how well you feel you understand my description of degrees and such, and then we can get into all this notation +1 -1 rigamaroll.