I think I've posted on StackOverflow/ServerFault three times in my life. If I've hit the point where I'm posting, I'm desperate and I've probably already spent 8+ hours scouring Google and trying everything I can think of.

If I do end up figuring out a solution, I definitely post it, and I'm glad that SO allows this, otherwise there would still be no answer to some of these questions online... One of these issues previously only turned up a single bash mailing list post from a decade ago with no resolution. Now searching for a few relevant search terms turns up my answer/solution in the top few results for all of them.

I don't care about imaginary internet points, I just figured I'd help the next guy out.

Some of these have been absolute God sends for me.

You have a cross between misinterpreting what something means, on obscure hardware, with a useless error message and you are normally stuck for days.

If I resolve my question before someone else in the community I always self answer to help the next guy.

More than once I've solved the problem by the time I am 80% of the way through formulating a question. As long as it's not something trivial I finish and post the answer immediately.