I haven't been here "from the day [Perlmonks] started," yet am in your list of "saints." If you want to see my examples of creative thinking, or anyone elses, go to that person's homepage here (just click on my nickname), click on the writeups number, and then tell it to sort on reputation. Both ends of this spectrum could be considered "creative thinking" - both popular and not.

As for my experience with some other users, some of it has been positive, some has been less so, but I try not to colour other peoples' perceptions about each other based on my own experience with those people. The less positive experiences I've had with certain monks may just be my perception and have nothing to do with who they really are, and would be far from fair of me to paint them with that brush in public. If you independantly decide that that person is a negative influence on your time spent on Perlmonks, then we're much more likely to be right. But if I colour that before you get there, that won't be fair to either that person or to you, who could otherwise have a very positive relationship with that person.

On the other hand, positive people will still be positive when you interact with them. So you won't lose anything if I don't tell you who I've found to be positive.

In short, I see no advantage to you for me to tell you about other monks. It's far better for you to figure that out on your own.