Google has no problem cutting through the cruft and usually delivers me the question and answers I'm looking for, straight at the top.

Just get more experience.
Although at the current level you see nothing wrong, but with getting more experience you will start noticing fallacies in the answers you find.

In fact, most found-by-google answers are outdated crap from '09, considered proper just due to their age. And here comes one of Stack Overflow's essential flaws - instead of being aimed at knowledge reuse and answers refactoring (for the purpose of improving quality) this site encouraging fast on-site short answers. Leaving old answers outdated and useless.

And with even more experience you will eventually face the problem for which there is no solution posted in SO yet. And here comes your second statement:

Are high quality questions being missed because of the others? Doesn't look like it. Every single question, no matter how off-topic/poorly-spelled/duplicate-obvious is immediately viewed/commented/voted-upon/answered by legions of rep-hungry users. It's hard to imagine that anything slips through the cracks.

This statement lacks logic.
"legions of rep-hungry users" doesn't mean "answered".
Quite contrary - these legions are trained on the easy prey, and don't bother with complex questions. I myself often see complex questions without single answer. And only by means of manually attaching a bounty one can get some attention to them. Which is a shame for the system that was designed to work automatically

Google has no problem cutting through the cruft and usually delivers me the question and answers I'm looking for, straight at the top.

Just get more experience.
Although at the current level you see nothing wrong, but with getting more experience you will start noticing fallacies in the answers you find.

In fact, most found-by-google answers are outdated crap from '09, considered proper just due to their age. And here comes one of Stack Overflow's essential flaws - instead of being aimed at knowledge reuse and answers refactoring (for the purpose of improving quality) this site encouraging fast on-sight short answers. Leaving old answers outdated and useless.

And with even more experience you will eventually face the problem for which there is no solution posted in SO yet. And here comes your second statement:

Are high quality questions being missed because of the others? Doesn't look like it. Every single question, no matter how off-topic/poorly-spelled/duplicate-obvious is immediately viewed/commented/voted-upon/answered by legions of rep-hungry users. It's hard to imagine that anything slips through the cracks.

This statement lacks logic.
"legions of rep-hungry users" doesn't mean "answered".
Quite contrary - these legions are trained on the easy prey, and don't bother with complex questions. I myself often see complex questions without single answer. And only by means of manually attaching a bounty one can get some attention to them. Which is a shame for the system that was designed to work automatically

Google has no problem cutting through the cruft and usually delivers me the question and answers I'm looking for, straight at the top.

Just get more experience.
Although at the current level you see nothing wrong, but with getting more experience you will start noticing fallacies in the answers you find.

In fact, most found-by-google answers are outdated crap from '09, considered proper just due to their age. And here comes one of Stack Overflow's essential flaws - instead of being aimed at knowledge reuse and answers refactoring (for the purpose of improving quality) this site encouraging fast on-site short answers. Leaving old answers outdated and useless.

And with even more time you will face the problem for which there is no solution posted in SO yet. And here comes your second statement:

Are high quality questions being missed because of the others? Doesn't look like it. Every single question, no matter how off-topic/poorly-spelled/duplicate-obvious is immediately viewed/commented/voted-upon/answered by legions of rep-hungry users. It's hard to imagine that anything slips through the cracks.

This statement lacks logic.
"legions of rep-hungry users" doesn't mean "answered".
Quite contrary - these legions are trained on the easy prey, and don't bother with complex questions. I myself often see complex questions without single answer. And only by means of manually attaching a bounty one can get some attention to them. Which is a shame for the system that was designed to work automatically

Google has no problem cutting through the cruft and usually delivers me the question and answers I'm looking for, straight at the top.

Just get more experience.
Although at the current level you see nothing wrong, but with getting more experience you will start noticing fallacies in the answers you find.

In fact, most found-by-google answers are outdated crap from '09, considered proper just due to their age. And here comes one of Stack Overflow's essential flaws - instead of being aimed at knowledge reuse and answers refactoring (for the purpose of improving quality) this site encouraging fast on-site short answers. Leaving old answers outdated and useless.

And with even more experience you will eventually face the problem for which there is no solution posted in SO yet. And here comes your second statement:

Are high quality questions being missed because of the others? Doesn't look like it. Every single question, no matter how off-topic/poorly-spelled/duplicate-obvious is immediately viewed/commented/voted-upon/answered by legions of rep-hungry users. It's hard to imagine that anything slips through the cracks.

This statement lacks logic.
"legions of rep-hungry users" doesn't mean "answered".
Quite contrary - these legions are trained on the easy prey, and don't bother with complex questions. I myself often see complex questions without single answer. And only by means of manually attaching a bounty one can get some attention to them. Which is a shame for the system that was designed to work automatically