svpii, thank you for starting this thread and doing a great job with this proposal.

Re: Jailer's discussion for duties of UAC, I see the items 1 and sometimes 2 as being primary duties of Moderators, and not a committee. Actions on these things are required much quicker than can be handled by committee. The committee perhaps could be the moderator of the Hot Debate forum, and could move back any thread from the hot debate forum to the original, ie. acting as a de-facto appeal board for those who disagree with the moderator.
Re: thread locking, we on FT have been very lucky that only rarely have things been necessary to lock, on other boards it isnt so, sometimes some idiot posts threads that are pure vulgarity/violence/crap with no actual content purpose other than to swear at everyone on the forum, things like this must be blocked immediately by moderators with powers to close threads, and move them to perhaps a trash bin thread, there, after 24 hours, the thread would be deleted absent someone objecting to its closure/deletion (someone besides the Original Poster). Also, because of the above, moderators should have power to suspend immediately any poster for 24 hours, sufficient time for the committee (or perhaps subcommittee) to life ban - subject to reversal by Randy. Obviously, there are standards to be set before a moderator or the committee would so act.
Normal users, ie those around more than a few hours would not be treated as drastically, this is only for the persons coming to spam/vandalize/etc the FT community, and I would add, I don't think this has ever happened, in my mind no thread I have read up to today would qualify for such treatment, so please dont think this is utter censorship... I just cant give a good example because it would all appear as **** **** **** **** etc. But, I have seen boards were posters posted exclusively 4 letter words just to inflame those on the boards, and I pray this never happens here.

Other than this exceptional event, moderators should never lock threads, but move them to the hot debate room (perhaps 2 moderators would be req'd to agree to lockdown threads even in my example above).

I like the Hot Debate Board, title and all. I like making sure there is a link in the original thread to the hot debate thread.

I also agree with the KISS principle. As such I think the 25 person comittee is perhaps big but, being this is not only an internet community but also one that travels a lot, it might need to be that big in order to get enough people to make a quorum, which should be perhaps 9-12? How about 66% for instituting suspension or rocommending expulsion.
I thank everyone for their thoughts on this thread and the commitment it shows to keep this commumity from falling into utter chaos and self destructing. Jailer Said: "It occurs to me that we really are a fairly homogeneous group (I don’t anticipate that the AA people will call for a Jihad against the United folks). " --- HE is right, we may be a motley group gathering from all parts of the world, but we have a common interest in miles, travels, and the things that make miles and travel important to us. Let's try to get a system in place to handle the "problems" of late, and then get back as quickly as possible to that which brought each of us here in the first place.

cheers.
TG

[This message has been edited by tummyg (edited 03-05-2001).]