I would simply remind everyone of the simple fact that in-person human communication is largely nonverbal; in addition to the words explicitly spoken, there is posture, eye-contact, demeanor, vocal intonation, facial expressions, and other manifestations of "body language" which all act in concert to clarify and amplify the spoken words.

In online communications on the other hand, EVERYTHING boils down to the words used, and most of the nonverbal stuff that would normally serve to clarify and fine-tune the points being made is lost in translation, and the result can be a whole lot of teeth gnashing, bad blood, arguments, and well-meaning people stepping up to encourage us to keep things civil. If I refer to someone on this thread as an "asshole", the reaction is probably going to be uniformly negative; it won't matter that I do so with a grin on my face and the intent that it is nothing more than a bit of good-natured ball-busting because the cues that would alert you to this fact just don't translate. A lot of problems can be traced directly to the difficulty of expressing irony, sarcasm, and general "dry" humor through a written post, all of which can be easily misinterpreted as insulting or "mean-spirited".

I don't think it is possible (or desirable) to radically change the way everyone posts, but if we could all bear this issue in mind I think it could help to lessen the impact when one of "those" posts shows up on a given thread.

It would also help tremendously if we could all remember the virtue of GRACE, and avoid jumping to the conclusion that a individual is wantonly behaving negatively every time we read something that we take some level of offense to.