Maybe vroom used psychohistory to predict that the Informatic Empire was in the process of collapsing. To minimize the ensuing chaos, PerlMonks was created as a sort of "foundation" upon which a new empire would be built. The success of the site is practically guaranteed by the science of psychohistory... --Encyclopedia Informatica

Although we tend to minimize its importance, I think that XP is probably one of the major factors of the success of PerlMonks. (How many people log in every day just to vote in order to pick up a few more XP?) Maybe there are ways to make a site like this even more RPG like...