My feeling on it is that so long as perlmonks sticks to
the Perl aspects of 100sexiestwomen or 100hunkiestguys
or 437fattestgeeks, and doesn't get off on tangents over
whether Cindy Crawford is hotter than Antonio Banderas
("mmm, Antonio", says my wife), it shouldn't be scaring
away people.
It's when people are judged or evaluated in messages on
perlmonks that you'll see people running away. Even if
the participants
in a forum aren't being judged, the mere presence of
judgements about anyone's figure or looks sends the
message "beware, we don't care about your brain, we care
about your boobs/butt/bald spot".
That's my 2c, anyway.