My college professor used to (still does I bet) proudly put the stack overflow 25karma point sticker and a letter of thanks from the admins on the door to his office. And this was a man with tenure etcetera.
It's entirely possible that the support he received from others outweighed the time he put in supporting others. I know for sure that's the case for me.
In my experience, SO is only useful for trivial questions, or maybe questions that ask for a better explanation of some basic concept. If you have a question you can't find answer for by searching on the internet, it won't be answered on SO either. I still occasionally help people there, but it was never a useful resource to me personally.
SO is most useful for questions that could be answered with a simple google search if only you knew the right search terms to use. For more complex questions, it's only occasionally useful.
For the most part I agree.. I do wish more people would simply do a search before asking some questions though... I see way too many lowball questions, and it's impossible to keep up with the hose/feed even on relatively narrow topics anymore.
