My personal opinion is that not being able to see the other person's face when you're communicating with them is a big part of the problem. Perhaps a cooldown period would help and I'm all for trying to find ways to improve discourse online, but at the same time, the psychology of being able to say whatever hateful thing you want because the other person is hundreds if not thousands of miles away drives a lot of this behavior. This is true of forums, gaming chats, etc.
