I will start one - and moderate it myself (to keep the whackos to a reasonable level) -- if 50 people here send me a note and say they will join
It does not solve the problem of useful threads dying off because they get overwhelmed by off-topic diversion to the extent that they are unusable for the original topic. Sometimes a number of posters just love the diversionary banter but that prevents those seriously interested in a particular subject from discussing it positively. Even if I start using ignore a lot, most will not and so some useful threads are still going to be overwhelmed and die off. It sounds as if Baron's new platform may offer the ability to keep a thread on topic, which would be great! I am not saying this a universal problem now. Most threads are obviously great as is and overall EliteTrader is an unmatched resource. But it is an occasional one.
I think having a thread which is initiated by the OP who selects those (chosen few) to participate is a poor idea. Better idea would be where everyone has an ignore list which then stops those few irritating people posting in his or her thread.
Yes this is most sensible, otherwise people new to the forum face an uphill task getting involved. We should also all accept disagreement as a normal part of discussion, so that threads remain vibrant. One can learn quite a bit from disagreement and discussion as opposed to a one-world view which may well be missing something. Losing the serial stalkers who follow posters all over promoting their one-world view would be nice. That sort of stuff is disagreement for the sake of being disagreeable.
...but right now it relies on the forum moderator to remove off-topic posts. I was suggesting that in your new feature (assuming I understand the basic concept), when a thread starter specifies a list of people eligible to post on an "invitation only" thread (if I can call it that), the invitation-only list be allowed to wide open initially, namely "All members," and the starter of such a thread be able to remove people from it as time goes on. This would only apply to "invitation-only" threads and probably there would need to be some limits on such threads.......
I think you'll find elitetrader to be the best. Traderslaboratory is very noobish, and trade2win and bigmike's are a step down.
The thing about ET is that some of the posters really know what they're talking about. Finding them is a bit hard but there are some heavy weights here ... And many idiots. And here at ET, there are of course some real gems, for example, Lescor's journal, and Atticus's options material is very good, and no one can beat spanish89's old journal from 2008 for pure entertainment value). From what I have seen, bigmike's forum is less prone to the stalking and harassment and idiocy I see here at ET. The quality of the elite journal section at Big Mike's, on average, is definitely a cut above what I see here in the ET journal section, but there are plenty of abandoned journals there as well as here. Traderslaboratory had a lot of promise during its first few years, but it has vastly deteriorated as it has passed from owner to new owner to yet another owner. There are sover very good threads there from years gone by, but it is largely a museum piece for now.