In general, reputation doesn't mean much on TeX-SX. So we don't have any problems that many other SE sites have. The main reason is that our wizards are also here which is fantastic and we know how good they are so reputation doesn't reflect other than participation in the site for the fun of it. A typical example, I have 40K, Frank Mittelbach has 24K. That's nonsense :)
Often someone answers a question and misses a duplicate but then someone else finds it in the database and the question gets closed. This doesn't mean that the answerer necessarily does it for reputation. Frequently the active users of the site remember reading such question before and look for the particular duplicate. If you don't know what you are looking for it's not that easy to find the duplicates.
But it's tough to find a balance because after a while you tend to answer in the comments. That leads also to other complaints :)
http://meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3238/why-do-people-answer-in-commentsWhy do people answer in comments?
So if you feel addicted and looking for closure at each and every question, my suggestion would be to see the questions as newspaper crosswords. Try it out as a challenge and do it as much as you can, then pass on to the next one. Then you wouldn't be bothered with what happened to the tick mark or who got the max votes etc.
