I have some advice for you: stop thinking so much about XP. It is a completely bizarre [fun, but bizarre] subsystem on top of a very reasonable system that we call Perl Monks.

Look at the questions and answers directly, not at how people voted for them. Sure, bad nodes may get upvoted a lot (not that I necessarily agree with this, but I'll grant you the point for the sake of discussion), but the important thing is that good nodes still get posted. And if you pay attention, I think you'll agree that they do.