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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darkness" data-source="post: 2121265" data-attributes="member: 13">The following is a brief analysis of potential problems, based on my experience with message boards, here and elsewhere.It's not quite an opinion or recommendation, for or against - just some things to consider. Now, if a thread is so far gone that it has to be closed, I see little hope for it. Generally speaking, obviously.As for pre-emptively closing a problematic thread for a few days so it can cool down... Theoretically, it might work sometimes. Practically, I suspect it would often require heavy moderation to get - and keep - such a thread back on track. (And even then, it would be a lost cause for a non-insignificant percentage of threads.)It would certainly require a lot of additional work from the moderators, as well as potentially more heavy-handed moderation in many cases. Which leads to more attacks by offenders and some other people looking for something - anything - to be offended about. (Which contributes to moderator burnout. Trust me, it's not pretty.)Does that make it unfeasible? Not necessarily. But it certainly means it's difficult.And if we're going to do it, be prepared for me to say the following in moderator posts in such threads a lot (and close the thread if it's ignored enough to wreck the thread):"Do not respond to personal attacks, inflammatory blanket generalizations, or other rules violations. Just report the post and move on."It's one thing to take care of a specific troublesome poster. It's much more difficult if others feed the troll (and keep the flames alive) by responding to unacceptable posts.</blockquote>

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