* "You vs Me" vs "Us vs the problem". In the latter, there's an objective Correct answer and each party would prefer to find it than to "win" the debate; in the former, the parties would rather "win" than discover new information that would change their mind. The article assumes that internet debates are of the latter variety, while in my experience they are 99% the former.
* With/without audience. Without an audience, you are trying to convince the person you're arguing with, which forces you to address their strongest points; with an audience, you (usually) have no real hope of budging the person you're talking to, and are only interested in persuading some hypothetical listener, so you are incentivized to ignore their strongest points and pounce on the weakest ones. Again, the essay is written as if internet debaters are speaking to each other, when in reality they are overwhelmingly talking past each other and hoping to persuade the audience.
Overall this reads like someone pontificating on whether it is politer in a bar fight to sucker-punch with the right or left hand. Perhaps of interest but not likely to affect any actual bar fights.