Ah - I see. I totally agree that tone and manner of rhetoric and speech should be drastically improved among most "online atheists".

I do distinguish between being nice and reasonably and truly "hearing someone out" though. To me, the difference is that when truly hearing someone out, you will be interrogating the exact data and logic behind the validity of their individual claims to their fullest extent. This is how I would respond to e.g., a scientific work that I view as potentially valid, serious, and important.

However, in some cases, I have found (and suspect in general) doing so can be counter-productive. Here is one example: a recent report made by climate change deniers using AI: https://xcancel.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1903468473579340261

Regardless of the motivations of the original authors, thousands of well-meaning people have now boosted or referenced this work as part of their rejection of climate change. But I don't think this work should be "heard out" in the sense that every single claim in it should be addressed by a skeptic of the work, the way one would approach a serious scientific work. This takes a ton of time and effort and is simply infeasible - and often draws one into an endless back and forth where individual points get lost. Rather, in this case I'd focus on describing the general epistemic errors being made, and heuristics that can be used to avoid these errors.

Another case I guess is the OP article. This article is apparently written by someone who is a believer in parapsychology! I believe there is little to be gained for me to spend time evaluating the claims of parapsychologists: in that sense, I am a "bad skeptic" according to the author. But it is really just not an appropriate use of my time. Rather, I would argue from a position of general skepticism and logical positivism and remind others that these are extraordinarily claims that if true, would imply so much of what we know about the world is wrong.

I hope my distinction here makes sense now. My reading of the OP is he isn't just saying "be nice", but "take us seriously". I think we've got to try our best to be nice. But to take something seriously is a much bigger ask, and one that is not necessarily always beneficial in every circumstance.