Cate wrote:I do something similar – I usually reckon to keep away from anything controversial and if I am going to reply I give myself at least 24 hours to think about it.
I tend to work on similar and also you tend to find that often someone else has replied far more constructively and politely that you might have done at the point where you first read the message. Ok so occasionally threads go off the wall completely and end up as war, but that isn't really the norm.
I do agree with what has already been said that people read things differently - it's often hard to read the emotion behind an message and it's easy to misread what was really going on in someone's head. Some people just aren't good at putting into writing what they are thinking or feeling without it reading completely wrong to a number of other people.