[cookiecaper]

SO has a few bad mechanisms that encourage behaviorial issues that the SO people just like to stick their heads in the sand about. Closing valid questions is one example. Making most questions a race to copy and paste the correct response out of Google by awarding the first response that looks vaguely correct with a permanent "accepted answer" badge is another bad thing, and really hurts people trying to give thorough or good answers. It also really hurts when that accepted answer turns out to have issues. How many times have you come across a question and found an answer with 10x the upvotes of the accepted answer and a thorough explanation about why, while that answer may seem right at first glance, it's actually wrong?

I spent a day or two trying to get karma on SO and then gave up. SO is still a good resource for some types of questions, but for the most part, it's not worth hanging out there to answer questions.