I made the same pleasant discovery at the Lisp conference in MIT this Spring. Face to face, lispers were much more respectful, polite and welcoming than one could have expected from following online lisp forums.
Many nice Lisp people don't bother with the online forums for the same reason that many nice non-Lisp people don't. I should have added "online forums" to my description of the hype-world.
It might be worth mentioning that mailing lists for specific Lisp implementations and libraries tend to have high-quality and largely respectful discussions.
