Maybe I've really got used to our monastery and others resources seem for me a little uninviting ...

Most places are a little uninviting until you get used to them. I was put off perlmonks for the longest time because of the ghastly user-interface (sorry - my usability hat is showing :-). I'm now glad I took the effort.

To argue it from the opposite end - you'll get far better answers to non-Perl questions in more appropriate groups.

While I'm sure there are many people here who know a fair bit of Java/CSS/whatever I can guarantee that there are more people with more expertise in an online community that is explicitly focused on a particular topic.

Ask a CSS related question here and you're not going to get Eric Meyer pitching in an answer, you will on css-discuss. Just like you're unlikely to get a (probably fairly pithy :-) response from merlyn or Abigail-II if you asked a Perl question on, for the sake of a random example, the apache users list.

Even worse, you might get an incorrect or non-optimal answer. Just because somebody knows a lot about managing apache, doesn't mean they know a lot about perl (or vice versa).