james: I certainly respect your opinion, and agree with your point about useful information being lost if the whole thread were to be deleted. Maybe there's some middle ground to be found between deleting the whole thread and leaving it as is.

In this particular case, the thread has devolved into name calling. I can't see why anyone would consider that part of the discussion worth having around. One of my favorite things about FT is the minimal amount of this kind of stuff. I know of plenty of places I could go on the Usenet if I wanted to read or participate in flaming.

Personally, I would rather delete the entire thread even at the risk of losing useful content in it if it would douse a mini-flame war. Part of the reason for my opinion is that I have seen this sort of situation in the past on other bulletin boards; participants (not the flamers) get tired of wading through the garbage and tune out, which is detrimental to the bulletin board as a whole.

Any ideas for a constructive, in-between solution?