I think the absence of documentation you note is the root of the persistence of the nonsense. In the absence of information in common references, many people are inclined to make up answers to their questions based on the little they know.

I wonder what your thoughts are about the prospect of getting perldata, perlfunc, perlsyn and perlop updated to provide less nonsensical descriptions of what the data structures, operators, functions and behaviors actually are, to cover the current omissions, so that people are less inclined to make up nonsense.