Ugh. I hear you! Your post reminded me of my favorite SO answer...

In fact, asking a question on Stack Overflow is the absolute last thing you ever want to do. You want to avoid it at all costs.

I joined SO 7 years ago, and have watched the steady decline in quality answers. The newbie questions are mostly terrible. Often new users make zero effort to research first and solve their own problems. They just post a question about a problem they barely understand, and then sit back a wait for someone else to solve it for them. And, as you’ve said the point mongering with answers is also a major issue. I spend a lot of time now filtering and closing dupe questions. Hopefully something can be done to improve it.