if Larry has made such a comment as the OP says, id really like to see it and analyze its context.
By mean-spirited, my personal take on that is that every programming community and forum has slight differences in the way they are structured and respond to questions and suggestions.

The perl community at the core is largely a hacker community and they dont necessarily have the same objectives and approach in spreading the growth of the language as say a corporate entity, that would do everything they can in order to enable perl adherence.

the perl community and perlmonks forum is i feel slightly different from other language communities. In fact id be surprised if there were a similar forum like perlmonks (considering its history,order,XP system and ways of working)