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cafebabe writes:

The article How common are cruel comments posted to online news sites?, suggests that more than 20% of forum comments were uncivil. Some topics were worse than others:

As might be expected, stories that focused on well-known leaders with clear partisan positions garnered more impolite comments. In stories that quoted President Barack Obama, for example, nearly 1 in 3 comments were uncivil.

Sports discussions are worst of all. However:-

The researchers noted one cause for optimism in their findings. When one commenter was directly replying to another commenter, they were more likely to be courteous.

"We tend to be more respectful in our public discourse when we recognize other citizens' perspectives, even when we do not agree with them," noted Kate Kenski, associate professor of communication at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study. "When we quote others participating in an online discussion, we tend to focus on their arguments, not on personal attributions, which makes the conversation more civil."

Does this indicate that threaded forums - in which replies are nominally directed at one person - produce the most civil discourse?