Take away the facial expressions and hand gestures and vocal inflection and just assume that no one is ever guaranteed to understand what you meant to say in an electronic forum. Sometimes you need to take the time to figure out if someone has become adversarial because they are just irredeemable persons or because they are simply confused. One can also simply ignore any of these persons under the assumption that they are simply irredeemable or simply unable to ever hope to appreciate your superlative prose. However, if everyone on the planet seems to take offence at your superlative prose, maybe you should consider improving your language skills. Or perhaps just making the prose a little less superlative.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Also, brevity downloads much more quickly on a 38400 baud modem. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If the number of masochists gets too high, this could be a large problem for everyone else, except, of course, the on-line sadists. Often people do not think before they post. Users need to remember that hundreds or thousands of people might see your messages posted for a public group.