I think there's one aspect of the perlmonk newbie's interaction with the voting process that you overlooked, and it was the thing that drew me in quickly during my first weeks of monk-ing. If this is all too obvious, I apologize in advance....

PARTICPATION

By voting, even as a newb, I am helping influence and steer this site. I become an active participant instead of just a lurker. The monks are interested in my opinion (not really a debatable point), and I may develop a sense of ownership and be encouraged to participate in other ways (posting).

Some may take this as a mushy, high-performance-teams sort of post, but I think the voting process is part of what can 'hook' you into becoming a regular visitor here. I realize this naively overlooks the trolls and the self-promoters, but I think it is a very attractive feature, and even if a node's rep means very little, it's cool to know that I helped make it slightly higher or lower.

UPDATE: I got a call in the middle of writing this,and got sidetracked. A point I was trying to get out was that I like the way this site uses XP and node rep to encourage participation, even for newbs, because holistically, the site is only useful if we provide useful posts (and vote on them).

--bibo