The easy and simple solution to this "problem" is to create a form of modified chat room - one name I thought of is the Velevet Rope. *** The modifications would include the following: 1. Pay-per-use required for special "velvet rope" privileges ($5 or $10 bucks a month as an example). 2. The chat room wold only be accessible using a password. 3. Transcript logs from the chat room would be available to all members of the chat room. 4. The hierarchy of the chat room would be your classic "Parent / Child" model used in programming. The originator of the chat room has "Parent" status, all members who are accepted into the chat room have "Child" status. (This allows the "Parent" to teminate offending parties at-will, delete any offending posts, etc.). 5. All users would have the ability to instantly communnicate with each other, upload charts, etc.
Something like this is certainly within the realm of possibility (and plausibility) on the Elite Trader website. It should be doable with the existing technology "as is", and will not require too much modification to the existing infrastructure. Rather than trying to incorporate other members into the room, the point of doing it like this is to create an exclusionary envrionment. In terms of the specific request, what you really will be doing Baron, is taking the people who post in the chat room out of the gene pool of the regular ET poster. It is noted that a multiple-alias troll, a paper trader, a guy who is desperately afraid to make market calls and a guy who spends all of his time on ET criticizing Larry Williams (by creating multiple threads, no less) think this is a "good idea", so taking them out of the gene pool of the regular ET poster (the multiple alias user - ET-trollbuster aka ProfLogic will probably post in both arenas using different aliases simultaneously) will not hurt your core business model one bit, and may improve the overall atmosphere of the website by making it more flame-retardant. ROTFLMAO!
how about all current members of the "select room" (which initially would not include sponsors until some critical mass is reached) get to accept or deny new members (including sponsors) by majority vote. That way baron is completely off the hook as far as not offending one of the jackass sponsors. There should also be some way to kick people out of the room (2/3 vote?) as insurance against the wrong people getting in.