Two Google programmers have put together a presentation called "How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People."

They provide an interesting way to go about refocusing an open source project that is bogged down by "poisonous" people, and they argue that often such people are not necessarily malicious. More often than not, such folks are perfectionists that can't stop the nitpicking to just pick a color for the bike shed.

I wonder whether some Wikipedians might benefit from this discussion of "poisonous people." There can definitely be some slippage between "poisonous people" and "careful thinkers," but there's clearly a line to be drawn. The question is, how does a community draw such a line? Short answer: it depends. But this google presentation offers some interesting ideas about focusing a project or dealing with messy email list exchanges.