Although most of FlyerTalk provides invaluable information, the occasional topics that devolve into unproductive, and occasionally nasty, discussions don’t serve the community. Currently, there’s a choice only of letting the discussions continue or locking the topic. To help reduce the clatter from those topics without imposing a lockdown, I’d propose a “One More Shot” policy for those topics that become more contentious than useful. Here’s how it would work:

When a forum moderator finds that a topic is becoming more of a battlefield than a useful discussion, the moderator would mark the topic as “One More Shot,” by posting a response and using a (currently non-existent, as far as I know) One More Shot icon. Once a topic is labeled OMS, each FT member may post one and only one response. No one is shut off from saying their piece, but anyone who contributes would know that they have one, and only one, chance to express their views.

There would need to be some ground rules of course: no fair to start another topic that’s essentially the same thing, no fair to edit an existing post by adding new content, and probably other stuff. And of course the FT rules and TOS would apply just as much to OMS topics as to any other.

(And if this has been proposed previously, I bow my sorry head in shame.)