To be fair, I'm not sure that that is something that some people may look at as a strong incentive for answering questions. As near as I can tell, those points aren't really public information (I could be wrong, I still need to explore more). As something relative, on one of my home forums, I possess roughly 6388 messages under my name for little over two years there. Does the fact I wrote more than 6388 posts there mean anything? To me, personally, it doesn't mean much, probably that I just write a lot of junk. Do other prople perceive me in some fashion based on my message count? You bet.

To me, the real incentive is to be a part of a data mine. Nothing pisses me off more than spending hours searching the web for some very difficult to solve problem where the only answers I can find involves something like this:

Seeker: I have a problem with hardware X causing a crash in software Y when I do Z. Anyone know of a fix?
Mentor: Have you tried to do A then B then C?
Seeker: Yeah, but that doesn't work.
Mentor: I know the answer, try doing D and see if that works.
Seeker: That doesn't work either, but I finally figured out the problem. Thanks for your help guys!
Me: WTF?!? What did you do to fix the problem? I've got the same exact problem! Hey! Come back! Please?

My ultimate goal is to ensure that never happens. If I have an answer for something I know works and/or is correct. I put it up everywhere I can and crosslink it as much as possible. But I still belong in the camp that we shouldn't do other peoples homework for them though.

Sigh... I'll never be wealthy. Will I?