I’m fairly new here, been here for over a year.
Mostly, everyone on here has been very nice to me, I haven’t noticed too much rudeness going on, except for the few snarky comments here and there. Fluther is mild compared to some other sites, such as Youtube and Yahoo Answers. When you join those sites, you’re basically being thrown in the lion’s den. I joined Fluther specifically because I thought there was a more mature and friendlier group of people and that I could actually talk to some of the users through pm and get help/advice, which I have. If someone is rude to me, I don’t take it personally. I keep reminding myself they don’t know me and can’t see me so it really doesn’t matter. The only time I bite back is if someone calls me names or calls me something I’m not.
I think some people get caught up in their discussions and tend to forget who their talking to. They probably don’t mean to be rude or mean, that’s just how their comments come across. Online you can’t sometimes tell whether people are being rude or funny. I always try to be nice everyone, no matter what.