That’s how I learned most of Unity, collecting karma on answers. Its not for everyone, but it does work.
Its like XBox live achievements. The players that love achievement like the system more then the players that hate achievements dislike the system.
And it’s an extra pay package to add these “gamification” features. They’ve gone the extra step and are adding forum DLC. Soon you’ll have to pay to remove the ads.
So what’s happening with Unity Answers? Because it is a mess and rather pointless. Questions like, “please give me the perfect code solution so I don’t have to do any work,” don’t belong there, and most of the content is from people who don’t even grasp the basics of coding AFAICS. The new Help Room isn’t being used by noobs, and I actually thought it was where I should ask a question asking for help with rendertexture alpha-blending code as I didn’t realise ‘Default’ was a forum selection. Clearly asking people to pick the noob forum is asking too much - they aren’t reading the instructions and are just wanting quick fixes a lot of the time - so how’s about putting questions in the Help Room by default and only post stuff in the Veteran Forum when explicitly selected? And calling the Default forum something other than Default so it’s clear it’s a forum?
As for Karma, it’s as described a year ago in that without getting accreditation, you don’t get the powers that’ll help with running the thing.
Is Unity going to do anything to turn UA into a meaningful resource, or should it be abandoned by those of us with enough experience to know better who can all hang out in stackOverflow? Serious question. How does Unity Tech want to advance and extend support among users to help advance the art*? I’m happy to help noobs with my time, but could do with places to get serious answers to difficult challenges (rendertextures and alpha blending in HLSL shaders isn’t explained anywhere I can find after several days looking) to help me and others progress. And most users really aren’t going to have lots of time to be charitable helping other users especially if that requires sifting through pages of beginner stuff looking for something meaningful to contribute to.
I don’t think my questions there were ever approved by a mod, so I just ask around the forum. Strange since I see ‘noob questions’ all too often there, and if I google something most probably a few results from Answers will pop up. ಠ_ಠ
I’ll say it: It’s time to kill Unity Answers.
There may actually be a valuable answer that actually addresses the question, but more often than not, these forums are more useful for getting actual replies or even just get more eyeballs on your question.
However, I’ve seen a few mods complain that by posting the same question on both answers and forums, you’re draining a mod’s energy by making them answer in both places.
If it’s karma you wanted, go post on stackoverflow. 
I kinda have to agree. Unity Answers should be archived for search result purposes but people should generally be referred to the scripting and beginners forums, as that’s where the majority of the questions on UA would find a home on the forums. There are some outliers, to be sure, but even they should be able to better find answers on the for