In Praise of Civility and How Best to Promote it?

This place has been sort of a toilet of name-calling and overt trolling lately, to the point where I almost left and never came back.

However, over the past couple of days, I've noticed a rather pronounced uptick in civility on numerous comment threads that partially restored my faith in reddit humanity. There are plenty of people who lean guilty who have intelligent things to say, and I want to hear them. On these threads, (mostly) rational discussion has even prompted me to shift my thinking about the case, and that's the whole reason I'm here: to challenge what I think, learn about new things, and hear different interpretations of evidence in order to make sense of a very confusing tale. Why else would any of us be here?

What can we do to promote civil, rational discussion? Obviously, the moderators can't remove all the posts that violate the rules (I say "obviously" because I come across so many rule-violating posts). The ones that I find the most offensive are the ones that seem to be attempts to derail otherwise intelligent discussions. Comments that refer to people as "liars," that state opinions as facts, and/or attempt to cast aspersions on people with different beliefs seem to be the least productive.

Maybe what I've done is adding to the problem, too. When I see comments that I find rude or offensive, I'll often jump in and try to ridicule the ridiculer. I've been nasty on here, but in my mind I'm only being nasty to someone who's already being nasty, trying to put that person in his/her/their place.

But maybe that's just as bad. Or worse.

Any suggestions from rational and civil redditors about what we can do to self-police?

Possible suggestions for dealing with uncivil comments:

-Dogpile mercilessly on the commenter with bloodthirsty mockery

-Completely ignore and freeze out suspected trolling attempts

-Calmly point out the rudeness of comments while refusing to engage

Seriously, I feel like it's possible to keep this productive civility going. The only possible result of arguing with any fundamentalist is a crap show.

Any ideas, and is there any hope of reaching any kind of consensus?