So far, I've found that if you're submitting a plausible sounding wrong error in the hopes of grubbing for XP, that it's best to have a well formatted, plausible sounding wrong answer.

Um...was that out loud?

Actually, to some degree, I think that there are plenty of people with different personalities out there. There probably are those who are concerned with cheating the system, and think that XP on Perl Monks is their path on the way to ... um... well, something. Anyway, there are those that like helping out, there are those that like showing off how much they know, and there are those that just like being complete asses in public forums. (and I say that after years of various online forums from BBSes/MUDs/Usenet/mailing lists/etc.) Nothing's really changed over the years, just the scope of people contributing, so you end up with more extreme people -- the people who really like to help, or really like being obnoxious.

But, let's face it ... people contribute to CPAN, and they don't get anything in return, other than maybe some noteriety. (see the gift economics discussion in the Suffering from CPAN guilt thread) Sure, there's a chance that you might get a job indirectly from posting to CPAN or Perl Monks, but most people aren't contributing because they're expecting something back, other than maybe feeling good about themselves for helping others.

Personally, I tend to contribute because I'm bored and/or procrastinating from doing other things (eg, I probably should be doing my taxes right now, or my homework for class next week.) Yeah, it'd be nice for someone else to learn from my past mistakes, so they don't have to make them, or to make other people think about new and interesting things, but well, I haven't figured out how to turn that into a viable economic model, or to help me in my plans for world conquest, so I'll just accept that ... um ... I should probably go do my homework now.