Occasionally, the gods find it fitting to set the faithful to a task: a Quest.

Each Quest is active for a limited time. This is usually fairly short — a few days or weeks — but sometimes a Quest lasts until the end of the epoch.

Quests are the gods' way of soliciting idea from the general populace for ideas for improving PerlMonks. Therefore, Monks who contribute worthy suggestions are eligible to receive special dispensations of eXperience Points. However, a greater incentive is the fame and karma (let's call it "pharma") that naturally accrues to successful Questers .

from All About Perl Quests