I think as with all websites, there is a bit that can be improved on PerlMonks.

The suggestions in this thread though seem to vacillate between evolution versus revolution. For those who want revolution, perhaps go make your own website ... even better if PerlMonks provided a data api to repurpose content to that site.

As for evolution, there is plenty that could be done e.g. what about starting off simply

• provide options like textarea editing as a progressivly disclosed option
• interact with larger community via twitter, delicious, web irc
• ratonalize site navigation ... lots could be tweaked here
• tweak content information especially categorization perhaps using colors
• expose data via RESTful interface
• add a 'Getting started with Perl'
• freshen up the design ... higher readability
• add appropriate high level bifurcations (like here is the route to Perl6 ) ... actually, I think posts could benefit from tagging (aka delicious)

Of course, everyone has their own opinion of what should be done ... and 'design by committee' sometimes makes something no one likes, but I think there are a number of things that could be done to make the site more accessible to all users, newbie or otherwise