There is so much wrong with that first paragraph. Deliberate, trend, acknowledged, NIHS... Hugely important swaths of modern Perl come from porting, often while improving, ideas from other languages Plack, KinoSearch, Catalyst, the ORMs, Moose.

I like good looking sites. I don't agree that this one is bad looking. I'm quite neutral about it. I'm a designer. I agree with what herveus said. I come here to read and focus, not to be dazzled or distracted; this site's layout, as boring and old fashioned as it might be, affords exactly that. If you want a bridge to a more ideal/modern site, there's nothing stopping you from using and recommending StackOverflow's Perl tag. The discussions there seem to be less interesting, involved, and accurate though, and the best answers seem to mostly come from monks and major Perl figures, not average participants.

Perception drives most of our choices

Don't put me in your our and we. I'm too tired of this to mince words: perception only drives the choices of shallow, quick-fix jackasses. If the site design keeps that kind of person away, ++.

You want Perl 6 now, write some. You want a pretty site, build it. Until you do one of those or at least start signing in with a username, you've seen the end of civility from me. COGTFO.