In addition to what jettero said this reminds me of why PHP has the big web share now. Many important Perl hackers resisted or even ridiculed the possibility of building code and sites in dressed-up, simpler on the end-dev ways. The web being what it is, mostly vapid and ephemeral, went there.

Tangent: Last night I was playing with Perl6 and thinking, "Wow, this is really neat. I'd love to hack on this a lot." In the light of what I just said about PHP I can't help but wonder if Perl6 is actually a box of coffin nails in disguise. :(

I personally like the style/interface of the PerlMonks site though and agree with most of your points. (I don't really care for the perldoc.perl.org redesign for example. It was easier to read before even if not as visually appealing.) PPI does a very good job now and could be used for a solid highlighter which, as most of us have said in the past, should be opt in for the reader if we ever have one, not the writer.