Bingo. Some topics you know, based on past experience, are going to be "rough and tumble". Witness the TravelBuzz thread on "seat blockers" to prevent people reclining their seat. Within a half-dozen posts, you could see that sides and weapons were drawn and much written blood would be spilled.

I'm not against "free-wheeling" posts. I've waded hip-deep into more than one myself, on occasion. But they should be restricted to more general forums - like OMNI or the "Buzzes". I don't need to read about seat blockers in the UA forum (especially since I find Economy Plus negating the issues with seat reclining). It might be more "relevant" in the CO or DL forums (with their universal 30-31" Y pitch), but even there, you know there will be a few "if you flew UA/AA/Business/First Class, you would not have this problem" replies and then it becomes airline vs. airline or elites vs. non-elites.

I think we need a new forum - Thunderdome - for threads that devolve into two sides that have ossified into intractable debates. Label it "Two sides enter, no side leaves" and let the folks who want to hash it out ad nauseum hash it out. No moderators. No rules.

Any moderator who feels a thread has "degraded" to the point it should be closed can move it to Thunderdome, instead. So the thread remains "open and available" so neither "side" has to open another "Overmoderation" thread here and those folks who joined in, and now are getting slapped around, have to live with their decision to get into it and can't run to a moderator or Randy and "demand satisfaction" for TOS violations because the TOS will not apply (in a general sense. There are always some rules that must be enforced for legal reasons, and posts that violate them can be deleted with an "Edited for legal reasons" moniker).

[Edited for UBB errors]

[This message has been edited by SEA_Tigger (edited 10-07-2003).]