@Robert Gentel,
Initially, I was concerned that only a few members had the emotional maturity to allow competing opinions on their threads...therefore, the Threadstarter Policing idea would quash most dissenting opinions, effectively diminishing interesting conversation - but the "collapsing" of deformed children (personal diatribes, troll eruptions) sounds really promising. Those who like to do jousting may - and those who prefer to avoid them have yet another tool...as if ignore and thumbing into oblivion aren't adequate...