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Sometimes it seems as though nastiness dominates the Internet. But there are signs that the Web is growing up.
When Jon Stewart interviewed MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow in early January, it triggered a discussion on the TV Newser website that got off to an ugly start.
"Maddow is a dude," sneered the first contributor to the site's comments section, in an apparent reference to the fact that Maddow is gay. But in the very next post came a sharp rebuke from another contributor: "This should not be a venue for homophobia." Soon, the comments section was overflowing with pro- or anti-Maddow sentiments, many of them passionately expressed. But the exchanges focused on the merits of Maddow's show and on her politics, not on her sexual orientation.
It could be counted as another small victory for the forces of civility that are fighting to establish a beachhead on the Internet. There is a quiet but growing movement to forge a truce in what Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, calls "an arms race of name-calling" on the Web.
"In public forums where there is some semblance of community, there are now norms and some degree of boundary-setting," Rainie says. "People are pushing back against offenders."
"There are lots of people in lots of places who are thinking hard about this and having conversations, asking: What is the character and culture of the Internet?" he adds. "Is it always going to deteriorate into a state of nature, or can we build a community where we can be civil to each other?"
Of course, buckets of venom still flow across the Web every day, every hour, every minute. Combine human nature with a social space that allows for anonymity, and nasty online behavior is often the result. But Amanda Voodre, 27, an online communication specialist at Simmons College, says that whereas a few years ago online insults would lead to an escalation in a war of words, the evolution of the Web has led to an informal code of conduct in online communities such as livejournal.com or in social-networking sites like Facebook. People who sling invective online are dubbed "trolls," she says, and are either ignored or told to get lost.
"The Internet has matured," Voodre says. "The younger generation of Internet users now see completely through the provoking that the trolls are trying to do. And the troll is defeated, because nobody is feeding that provoking."
No less an authority than Miss Manners, whose real name is Judith Martin, has noticed the stirrings of civility on the Web.
"If you recall, when the Internet first became wildly popular, it was supposed to be an etiquette-free zone," says Martin, who in addition to her syndicated column also writes for WowoWow.com, a website aimed at women. "But if you're saying, 'You're stupid,' sounding off and insulting each other, nothing of any substance gets said."
"What happened on the Internet was that people rediscovered an old truth about community life, which is that if you do not have some rules, nothing gets done. So gradually rules developed."
Of course, rules are made to be broken. Message boards and blogs containing vitriolic personal attacks are never more than a click or two away. But such attacks are increasingly likely to be met with a strong response by other users, who are sending this general message: Hey, keep it clean. No need to get personal. In the immortal words of "Seinfeld" character George Costanza, "We're trying to have a civilization here!"
"People are becoming outraged and they're becoming more vocal about it, about the kinds of things they're seeing on the Internet," says business etiquette expert Lydia Ramsey, who has written about how the careless use of e-mail can damage careers. "People are working hard to bring it back to a level of civility."
This could stem in part from an awareness, especially by younger users, that many employers and college admissions officers have begun to routinely check social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to see what applicants have posted about themselves. Attention to the corrosive aspects of Internet dialogue has also been intensified by such books as "Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob," by culture critic Lee Siegel, who coined the term "blogofascism," and Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur."
More broadly, efforts to change the culture of the Internet could reflect the typical life cycle of a new technology as it moves from infancy (the 1990s, when the Web came into widespread public use), through the upheavals and excesses of adolescence, to a potentially more stable middle age. "In the early days, the Internet was going to help everybody get along together," observes Rainie. "It was going to be the Age of Aquarius. Then it became obvious that it's really hard to gain trust when I'm a user name from who-knows-where and you're a user name from who-knows-where."
But if spammers, flamers, and predators helped put a disillusioning dent in the early dreams of a utopian online community, two recent episodes helped throw the need for Web civility - and for common decency - into exceptionally sharp relief.
The one that galvanized wide public attention was the suicide two years ago of 13-year-old Megan Meier of Missouri, who was the subject of a cruel Internet hoax by Lori Drew, her 47-year-old neighbor. Drew set up an account on MySpace and posed as a 16-year-old boy named "Josh Evans" who wrote flattering and romantic messages to Megan. The girl killed herself after "Josh" sent her a message saying, "The world would be a better place without you." In November, Drew was found guilty of three misdemeanor computer crimes.
The other episode was not as widely publicized, but it helped accelerate discussion within the technology community about the need to reform the toxic culture of the Web, especially with regard to verbal attacks on women. It occurred in March 2007, when Kathy Sierra, a game developer, canceled her appearance at a high-profile tech conference after she became the subject of vicious e-mails and blog postings, including an image of her next to a noose. "I am afraid to leave my yard, I will never feel the same," Sierra wrote. "I will never be the same."
Coincidentally or not, content-sharing sites like Digg and social media like MySpace and Facebook have gotten markedly more civil of late, according to Internet consultant Jordan Glogau. He attributes it partly to the fact that older users now utilize the sites, and partly to commercial imperatives: The owners of such sites don't want advertisers or investors scared away by a Wild West environment. The quest for credibility has also become increasingly important as the Web has matured. For example, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which relies on user-generated content, has tightened up its safeguards against the posting of hostile or inaccurate information designed to harm the reputations of companies or individuals, Glogau says.
However, Internet marketing specialist Stephen Pierce says that while the Web needs to develop a culture of disagreeing-without-being-disagreeable, it should remain a forum for robust discussion. "There's a balance that needs to be struck between a person who is being outright mean or racist, and someone who is voicing their opinion," says Pierce. "There are times when there's a healthy debate, and people want to express their emotions."
Still, Pierce welcomes any movement toward civility. He points to the growth of websites like Yahoo! Answers, in which an ethic of politeness prevails, perhaps because users are asking one another for answers to such questions as "How do you make jalapeno?", "How do I get a federal grant to pay for my education?" and "Does anyone know any tips on ingrown toenails?"
Even there, though, there is evidence that many people brace for brickbats whenever they venture onto the Web. A user identified as "yayaya" recently asked Yahoo! Answers when and by whom the Internet was invented, and then elaborated the query in words that, flawed punctuation and all, just might stand as a kind of manifesto for the Web civility movement:
"and im just looking for the answer
dont tell me 'why are you posting this on yahoo answers!? you're stupid' or anything mean/ sarcastic, if you dont know the question or have nothing to say about it, dont answer."
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com. 
