No, the issue is that, in SO karma, relatively common knowledge seems to be valued orders of magnitude more than insight on problems few people would be able to

No, the issue is that, in SO karma, relatively common knowledge seems to be valued orders of magnitude more than insight on problems few people would be able to solve. While some of those questions are probably just obscure trivia, it also includes advanced knowledge of (say) compiler optimization. Cases where most people on the site wouldn't be familiar enough with the subject matter to tell an insightful answer from ignorant ranting. It can also be a measurement of how much time you're willing to sink into talking about programming, rather than actually doing it. (HN has the same problem.)