I have seen impolite stuff - but not a lot - so far. I tend to think people who are rude in the virtual world are also rude offline. I Could be wrong, but I’d need proof of why they have a sudden personality switch.

Also, people tend to forget that email, responding on a blog etc, can be interpreted in many ways, that’s the nature of the beast. To compensate we find ourselves over explaining what we mean because we don’t wish to offend. Since blogging is about sharing opinions it’s inevitable that sometimes one will be offended, because perception is everything.

Because so much of our communication (at least 70% according to studies) is based on body language, face to face meetings and conversations will always come out as preferred. The fact of business and social life however, is that technology has made it unnecessary to have face to face meetings if you don’t want/need to, and anyway sometimes it is impossible if you live in different countries (as many of us do)different time zones or even in a different town. In my opinion many people have been liberated from the need to travel long distances to “face to face” meetings and can put the time to more productive use… you can do almost anything now over the internet, whether this be via email or social networking utilities like Facebook.

The point about anonymity is a good one… although it isn’t always the case. Some anon blog responders are more polite than the “named” ones.

But, I could name some real biatches.

“(such as the recently released study on Armed Forces participation differences in Facebook and MySpace, which is a fascinating read)”

Sounds linkworthy to me. Why no link?

PS
I am not more polite online.
I view most etiquette rituals as silly and slightly oppressive in that they tend to maintain the status-quo and silence people with differing viewpoints.

For example, comments on personal blogs tend to be, but are not always, fairly polite. Same goes for Facebook, since most people use their real name. I’m assuming that for the IBM employees in SL, their avatars would be linked to their real life identity somehow.

However, in mediums where anonymity is the norm, politeness sometimes takes a backseat to harshness and results in downright ugly comments. Whether trolling or not, some people in these situations tend to make comments that one would never make in a face to face conversation.