I'm fine with a Canonical tag, but I don't see how that makes it more accessible to our users; they'd have to know to look for it. My thinking is a prominent link right up top, displayed as if to say 'these have already been answered'

No worries, @JohnGardeniers. I try to be helpful in my trolling... I'm quite fed up with some of the hand-holding that many people seem to require. It makes me want to point to the "Professional" part of the site charter more often than not.

This. A thousand times This.

I commented on Rob Moir's answer, but I don't praise mediocrity. If I can help with an edit or clarifying question, I will. But sadly most questions aren't good enough for an upvote, nor bad enough for a downvote.

I go through phases where I try to vote more, especially on questions. But honestly, there are many where I just don't think it's good enough to warrant the upvote, especially if I have some knowledge of the problem-space. It may not be bad enough to warrant a down-vote, but I don't praise mediocrity. I try to provide follow-up questions or edit if I think it can help. I do upvote on questions that I can't help with but the question was well-constructed with what appears to be quality supporting information. In those cases, I usually make such a comment.

My highest-rated answer (serverfault.com/a/189577/50875) is in response to a question that is borne of ignorance. (Note: I don't rate ignorance as a bad thing.) This is a question that you would not know the answer to unless you'd dealt with it; There is no manual addressing the issue, and many people have come across this in their careers. (Though I'd never expect that answer to have garnered so many points.)

Thank you for the well-reasoned response. It simply seems that SF is sometimes/occasionally set to be people's default search provider. While it's an easy way to build points, I feel that it makes the experience suffer.

Can we help - by pushing it in (Frodo-style)...?

If we interpret that as a double-negative, it becomes "worth"... ;-)