I have noticed myself that the biggest point getters are generally posts about the site, or Perl vs other languages. The second biggest point getters are new posts on SoPW - regardless of the fact that most of the posters are asking for help, not actually posting anything useful about Perl.

Then down at the bottom are points for posting a useful reply. Occasionally you can get a lot of points for this as well, but the number of points is generally in reverse proportion to the complexity of the topic.

I think the reason for all this is that scattershot voting is easier than voting on social topics, and voting on social topics is a lot less work than voting on posts replying to SoPW, and simple SoPW posts are easier to choose between than those on complex topics. I'm partially to blame for that last myself, since I have to pass up voting on a lot of the system or module-related Perl questions due to lack of knowledge, but I also rarely upvote a social post or SoPW thread starter. Posts don't deserve points unless they contribute to general knowledge.