I hope people will forgive me if I use the freedom of the Meta group format to add a commentary that is too long for a comment.
@AlanMunn's answer is one that I find extremely helpful for clarifying the culture of TeX.SE. The other answers are also very helpful. However, I think those who function as leaders in TeX.SE should consider the possibility that the prevailing practice discourages participation in TeX.SE. I am not in any way an expert on LaTeX, but I have 20-25 years of experience with it, and have occasionally hacked raw TeX, edited style files, Postscript files, etc. It turns out that most questions in TeX.SE are narrowly focused on issues I don't care about and don't know about--OK, no problem there. But I have gotten incredibly helpful answers on TeX.SE, for which I'm grateful, so I want to contribute. In the past, when I saw a new, unanswered question on a topic I know something about, I would open it. However, the question had usually already been thoroughly answered in comments. This became frustrating. So I usually gravitate toward not participating in TeX.SE, except when I have a question. What's the point? I don't care about most of the questions, and I can't tell which other ones are answered---and they usually are. The fact that answers are eventually moved out of comments into actual answers doesn't help with this problem. (Of course there are a few questions of interest whose answers I don't know, but those are hard to find.)
Voting on and accepting answers isn't a perfect system, but it's a good system with thought put into it, and it can work pretty well. The TeX.SE practice partly discards the benefits of that system, it seems to me. As for people who are just trying to earn points, well, I don't really see the problem. The SE system is designed to encourage that behavior, and for a good reason. If people give bad answers, they won't get voted up. So what? (If they're really bad answers, they'll get downvoted.)
Comments asking for refinement, broadening, etc. of questions are a different matter. These are of course appropriate and are used in other SE groups. No objection here. I often post possible answers, along with requests for clarification, in other SE groups when I'm not sure what the OP is asking. In TeX.SE, in addition to questions that are looking for clarification, refinement, or broadening, there are many comments that contain what I consider full-fledged answers.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the situation, but it sounds as if TeX.SE functions as a group in which a few experts end up providing most of the answers, except for more obscure issues. That's an OK system. It might place additional burden on the experts, but I have no problem with that if they don't. However, it may be that the practice also ends up restricting the diversity of the pool of people who are around to answer the more obscure questions.
Anyway, those are the thoughts I have. Thanks.