Erik,

>Tamar, I wholeheartedly agree. But I have not yet seen a a rule or set of rules that can successfully take the ambiguity out of the process, and until such a set of rules is defined, a policy like this will come under fire by those who feel they were unfairly censored.

With that point of view, how would you decide which threads to send to the free-for-all area? Are you saying that they would not feel they were unfairly censored because they can continue the thread there? But how would you decide when to send them there?

Whatever criteria you come up with for that question could just as easily be applied to freezing a thread or revoking a membership, if the management had a will to do that. Again, I say it's difficult, but not impossible to come up with a set of rules that can be enforced. It's the type of enforcement that is the *real* issue here.

Another approach is to just find a way technically to send the threads to devx. :-)

>... most the Sysops feel uncomfortable freezing or removing a thread or account if they can't be sure that the other Sysops agree.

It's simpler than that. Make the rules very specific. Let any sysop issue warnings to members, including to other sysops, who violate those specific rules. Let any sysop suspend a membership if the warnings in that specific instance are not heeded, even if the violator is another sysop. Let the owner of the forum rule on any disputes among sysops.

If that were done, some people would scream "censorship", some would leave, some would push the limits until they were forced out, and *many* would breathe a sigh of relief. From what I have seen so far, I doubt that approach will ever happen here, because I don't think the management either sees it as necessary or has the will to do it.

>I hate to see any part of the UT turn into the kind of mess that OR is daily. Regulars over there actually _pride_ themselves on insults and vulgar language, which is fine for that board, because contributors knew the rules from the beginning.

And members know the rules here from the beginning, but don't see them consistently enforced. Enforce them or change them, but don't continue with the same status quo.