Civil and high quality are two hammers educated people enjoy using to bash people without dieting their hands. The article address the fact they couldn't verify the content of the discussions, but decided the format shows they are better than the ones in which cursing is prevalent.
From my personal experience, I'd agree that trolls don't invest in their online personas, usually. Getting online in the 90's meant finding who I was, instead of transplanting my real identity to the internet. Without so much centralization, each one of us were a lot of different people expressing all our different sides in different places. Using the same user name everywhere would end up in nice surprises when friends from one place showed up in another, something that would put us in danger of persecution nowadays.