I can't speak for anyone else, but when I answer a question, I answer to the best of my ability, with the knowledge I have today. If we all waited until we knew Perl perfectly, none of us could answer. Of course our knowledge is imperfect. It always will be.

The problem is that it's very difficult to know what you don't know - to realize that your knowledge about something is faulty.

The XP system is imperfect, of course. Sometimes mistakes get upvoted, often because the answer is a common mistake that many people make. It happens, and sometimes you get complete nonsense passing as solid gold.

It seems to me, though, that more often someone out there knows what s/he's talking about, and offers a correct answer, or a correction to a mistaken answer. Then you have to decide who to believe - and the right answer might not get as much XP for any of a number of reasons.

Bottom line: at the Monastery, as in real life, we have to use our own minds, come to our own conclusions, do our own reality testing. Relying on XP to guide us is misguided, because XP is mostly a measure of a post's (or poster's) popularity, not its accuracy.

Finally, after a few erroneous answers, you get to know who has a clue, and who's just guessing. Even the experts make mistakes, though, so you still have to check everything yourself.