Everyone interprets answers differently -- it could be that answers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 don't help the OP, but #6 is 'just right'. According to your post, the respondent who actually helped the OP should get downvoted. I disagree.

In addition, any one of those posts could start sub-discusions of their own, leading to more 'discoveries' by people going back, re-reading the entire thread and adding their comments.

My suggestion to you is to downvote posts that are inflammatory, useless and/or wrong; to upvote posts that are useful, insightful, or even funny; and to ignore posts that seem to repeat the same answer in subtly different ways.

And don't worry about XP. Perl Monks is about learning, exploring and sharing Perl; it's not about the XP.