I am only a perl monks initiate, but I've been lurking around for over 2-3 weeks now. And I've yet to see any sign of personal vendetta or conflicts. The closest thing to a conflict that I've seen, was some critism on Merlyn, because he wasn't polite in his explanations to newbies posts. The argument ended with Merlyn stepping back a few levels from saint. But nowhere in the discussion did anybody react in an uncivilised manner.

On your point on internet communities, I can assure that there are communities with more hostilities. And yes this community has its more influential users. Those peoples opinions have more impact than others. But as demonstrated by the Merlyn example they are alsow more monitored by others, who are not afraid to make remarks if they see anything that they think is not correct.

The points you made about:

1. Vote on nodes, not on people.
2. A terse reply to a post is better than no reply at all
3. Constructive adjectives that are sometimes unjustly criticized
4. Gratuitous adjectives that are sometimes praised as "critical": stupid, careless
5. Remember that the Perl Monks community is about sharing Perl knowledging
6. All members of Perl Monks should be made to feel welcome, with the proviso that no one should be exempt from fair criticism

Seem to be mutated versions of real life issues:

1. Judge someone's work by the work not the person
2. Does some one have responsibilities when she/he is helping someone else.
3. Political Correctness
4. Political Correctness
5. On topic versus Offtopic discussions (e.g. in NewsGroups)
6. Freedom of opinion versus hospitality

IMO anyone will have the same opinion about an issue in PM as about their real life equivalent. So the problems in PM are the same as in any real life community.

I wouldn't say that personal battles and backstabbing are not present in PM. As any community, it can't be immume. But I would say that they are not frequent in this community that grew out of the intention to help other people.