Question: I am pretty sure I am stating a risky question here, and maybe it is the hot weather that makes me see things in a different way, but what is the main goal of what we are doing on AU? 

The reason for asking is that -I imagine increasingly- AU is flooded with programming- related questions with a *seemingly* realistic value, but actually can be solved in one or two lines in *any* language. Nevertheless they generate a *huge* voting activity and a lot of answers, as if they were life saving issues.

Although I, as well as many others, benefit of it every now and then, I have the feeling these questions, even if it is `bash`, `grep`, `awk` or whatever language, should be asked elsewhere, unless they have at least some *real* practical value and are related to an existing problem of OP. It is a bit weird that maybe (just a guess) 50% of my reputation I earned in less than 5% of my spent time here, and mostly on answering questions, that, if we are honest, are about completely nothing.

Answer: 
I think I can answer this one, because I'm an extensive user of the questions you're talking about. Point by point:

> 
> [...] AU is flooded with programming- related questions with a *seemingly* realistic value, but actually can be solved in one or two lines in *any* language.
> 
> 
> 

I.e.:

What's the value of such questions?

* For the asker: the most an answer can give him, since it solves its problem;
* For the answerer: the most the answerer can learn from answering it; personally, I've learned a lot just in trying to answer those kind of questions;
* For the others: usually nothing, aside from what they are willing (if they are willing) to learn from a given answer, unless they have the exact same problem, unless they somehow manage to adapt an existing answer to their specific problem or unless the problem is wide-spread enough. So, overall, I totally agree with the fact that such questions are usually so narrowed and specific they won't help the majority of the users experiencing a similiar problem;

> 
> Nevertheless they generate a *huge* voting activity and a lot of answers, as if it were live saving issues.
> 
> 
> 

I agree with this. Being honest I have to say I've earned the most of my reputation from those, and some were really *excessively* upvoted, while I gave a couple of way more interesting answers, one here and one on Unix & Linux which, at least IMO, would have deserved it way more. But shrug, people upvote the answers to questions they are interested in that they can deem as helpful, not the one they are not sure or have no idea about (this as a general rule). In any case, going to the point, questions should be upvoted only when well written **and useful**. Answers should be upvoted regardless, because this is necessary to identify the best answers and that's how the system works. Personally I agree with the fact that being their scope so limited, unless really covering frequent problems of text-processing such as, say, removing duplicate lines from a file, such questions should not be upvoted.

TL;DR
-----

* In 99% of the cases, such questions are useful to the posters, to the answerers and to a very low number of other users;
* They indeed generate lots of reputation to their askers and to the answerers; the problem is that these kind of questions shouldn't be upvoted if not really of interest; good answers, on the other hand, should be upvoted regardless, because this is necessary to identify the best answers; I agree that the amount of reputation generated is excessive, however this is due to how the system works and due to the high number of users partecipating in such questions.

So, in a nutshell: I think those questions should be kept, mainly because they are useful to the askers; I won't deny they somehow introduce a reputation problem. However I also think that this is not solvable. People are interested in them and vote on them (me included), what are we going to do? Setting those questions as off-topic would indeed solve the reputation problem but mainly would decrease, in my opinion inacceptably, the value of the community for the askers.
The main goal of Free/Libre Open Source Software is to advance the human race without any intellectual encumbrants. AU is to allow you to contribute to the advancement of FLOSS, therefore you're just helping to advance the human race... **:-)**

Whether it's getting a server back on-line, finally convincing someone to actually take back-ups or convert a text file meaningless to you but used to sort data on retro-viruses finding the ultimate cure to cancer, doesn't really matter, does it?

**Tip:** When you hit 20K and you're an established user, take a small break from answering questions, go lie on a beach somewhere, read a good book and stay away from the site for a week or so. Even top-level guys like you need a break every now and then and it seems you need a break! **;-) :P**