I think the reason people feel the need to place value on XP, or
at least in my case, is that it's exciting to gain levels. It's like
in games, you get really excited the first few levels that you increase.
After you have gone up several levels you don't need that feeling
anymore.

I think that a bit of XP-whoring when a new user is good,
because new users have to learn things like how to post here, how to
respond to nodes, and they actually have to learn, instead of just
posting a question and getting an answer without any effort on their part.

On a side note: I wonder if subliminal XP-whoring works? ^_^

-xPhase