It's called gamification.

It doesn't look zero-sum, looks more of a win-win game than a win-lose game, until we don't count the number of hours lost trying to assemble a long answer etc...But time/money/energy seems priceless when you seem to love/like what you do!So its poised to be a win-win for the source gets reputation/credits and publisher gets visits too!

So from another perspective , it seems ones likes and dislikes can be used in more ways than one!But guess transition from use to abuse occurs when priorities change!

I once saw the top points earners on StackOverflow was Jon Skit who had earned 700k+ points. I looked at count of his answers, length of average answer and estimated that he must have spent 4hr per day each working day for past 4+ year to get that many points.

That's interesting.Doesn't this defeat the very purpose of having reputation points mentioned in CV?

This was on minimum side. If you convert this to hourly rate, it's same as he donated about half a million to StackOverflow.

So that's how this so-called zero-sum-game looks but its more driven by priorities than perspective.We don't know how many people were saved from excess time and energy spent on understanding the same because of one persons generosity.

Now if you can upvote this answer, that would be great ;)

wish i could do it twice :)