Mind you I am not perfect either and have occasionally fallen into the trap of saying something to someone on the internet (including this forum) that I would not say to them in real life. And to anyone on this forum that I have offended previously my sincere apologies.One of the benefits of our medium, this forum, is the time you spend with the other users. It helps drill into your head that there is a person behind the keyboard that you're talking to. Other mediums such as reddit or twitter do not have this benefit, it's why their discourse is so much lower and usually consists of people quoting bumper stickers and slogans at each other. That's also why some of the new users tend to come in guns blazing, since they haven't taken the time to acclimate themselves to the forum and get to know the users. I appreciated RVF's self-description, the forum should be thought of as a mini-club.
Its very hard to stop this behavior altogether and its normal to occasionally slip up but just by being mindful of it we can minimize the amount of times we say nasty things to others on the internet.