Following my curiosity, I rechecked the registration form because I have a mixed memory about using CAPTCHA. And there's no CAPTCHA there. Now I remember that this memory mixing is because at the same time I registered at PM, I registered at other services. Some of them using CAPTCHA.
because the only way people found out about Perlmonks was, literally, by word of mouth
There's a direct link to Perl Monks from http://www.perl.org, right there on the front page. And I believe this is not the only one, now and later.
Update: added note about link on Perl.org

Open source softwares? Share and enjoy. Make profit from them if you can. Yet, share and enjoy!

In reply to Re^2: Curiosity on some new usernames by naikonta
in thread Curiosity on some new usernames by naikonta

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