Q:

Funny circular questions with tons of upvotes

This circular pattern has baffled me:
Question asked on Super User with +118 upvotes:
Does email address obfuscation actually work?
The Accepted answer got an hilarious +187 upvotes.
The same question was asked one year ago on Stack Overflow with +14 upvotes:
Does e-mail obfuscation really make automatic harvesting harder?
The accepted answer was worth +21 upvotes posting the same link reposted on the accepted answer on Super User
Asked again today on Stack Overflow with +16 upvotes:
What's the best way to present an e-mail address on my website without being attacked by spammers?
The top voted answers got +17 upvotes by simply linking the above question on Super User
this closes the circle.
Any thought about that?
RELATED:
I'd also like to see the removal of reputation earned from answering a question that is later closed as a duplicate

A:

I also noted that hypothetical (or theoretical) questions get more views and votes as actual programming related questions.
So my thought is, that there's a rep-race on the usual "How to [insert-verb] a [insert-noun] in [insert-language]" questions, which are simply "fire-and-forget". Users sees that kind of question being answered and simply stop bothering. There's nothing to earn.
Our theoretical friends, however, strangely manage to make it to the list of "hot questions" on StackExchange...

A:

It's all luck. One popular blogger links it, and your answer is worth double or more the votes.
This is why I think posts should stop giving reputation after having achieved a rating of +20.

