What's the point?

Well, I have stuck it out, answering a few questions here and there where I can, almost exclusively in the ColdFusion forums.  But not nearly as many as I used to be able to answer when NNTP was available.

So I have manged to collect a few of these so called "Answer Points' or whatever they are named.  And I wonder what could they ever be good for?  I have noted many of the arguments against them and find most of them to be quite valid.

But, while noticing when my points would accumulate, I thought of one possible use for them, if only this system would allow it.  It could be useful, if I could somehow get a list of my posts that have been awarded points.  Then I could see where I have helped people and what answers where actually useful to somebody.  But there is no way to do this.

I can look at the list of my recent posts in my profile, and see which ones have been answered by the checked star.  But in many of those, my post was not marked as the 'answer' by the poster, so each answered thread may or may not apply to me.  On top of this, there is nothing that indicates when and if I give a 'helpful' answer.  When I am bored, I will sometimes review all my posts for a period of time.  Even then, I can not account for all of my points.  I am earning points either on posts that I can no longer see on the screen listed on my profile, or there are other factors involved in this point system that are not understood by me.

Not that I actually expect anything to ever come of this idea.  And I would probably be happier of this strange point system was discontinued as I feel it probably has more problems then any possible good.  But if we do have it, wouldn't it be nice if it was actually useful for something.