I think that one of the main issue that Stack Overflow is facing right now is directly related to their karma / points system. Those points can (and are) be use

I think that one of the main issue that Stack Overflow is facing right now is directly related to their karma / points system. Those points can (and are) be used as a social proof of your programming abilities, which can be leveraged in a CV. With that in mind, the goal can be to maximize the number of points by spending the minimum time possible, thus looking for quick and easy questions. I am both an "asker" and an "answerer" on SO. When I have time, as an "answerer" it's really difficult to look past trivial questions and to provide insights on more complex questions where : - The time needed to provide an insightful answer is higher - The question is so precise and focused that few users will benefit from it, so the potential upvotes are low as well As such, the potential karma per second I can get from those value-adding question is quite low. It's much easier to correct a comparatively simple null-pointer-reference in a simple piece of code. As an asker, I have the opposite trouble : my question are usually pretty focused on a specific and complex area. I do not post on SO unless I really have tried a lot of different options. I spend a lot of time articulating the question, posting as much detail as possible, and documenting what was tried and what did / did not work. I usually get 0 answer since the question needs the answerer to spend quite a bit of time to sully understand the issue I am facing, and needs expertise to provide an answer. As an answerer, I have nearly stopped spending time on SO because I have a hard time providing actual value. As an asker, I have nearly stopped spending time on SO because I have a hard time getting value out of it. I do not have a solution for this issue, but one solution would be to skew the karma system to encourage user to answer complex, focused, and difficult questions.