There really is no excuse for carrying on with personal spats, making insults and name-calling (publicly) online. Those that insist on doing this in public, for real would be thought to be rude, strange, anti-social and childish. Why should it be any different online?

For it is possible on usenet to e mail posters and insult them all you like, and no one else has to wade through it. The same is also true on this forum with personal messages (if one has a cookie of course).