@James Young I hope it’s clear from my post I am in no way advocating that we should all agree with each other. We absolutely shouldn’t! However you can debate passionately and still remember that there is a real person, with real feelings on the other side of the discussion.

I think Twitter leads a lot to the problems you mention. If someone I know puts something out and it is good, I’ll say that I like it on Twitter. If I spot a problem with it I won’t try and explain in 140 chars, I’ll drop them a line. So it then looks as if all that is posted is praise. I won’t apologise for that as Twitter just isn’t the forum for critique or pointing out issues, it has a tendency to come across badly, better to take it ‘off the forum’ if possible.

To be honest the sort of things that prompted this post were not even criticism, just nastiness. There is never an excuse for that.