Ok, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to create the ability for thread starters to moderate their own threads, but initially, it will only be in a single forum. That forum may be a new forum or one that currently exists.... I haven't decided yet. That way, the forum will serve as a sandbox to test out the concept, and if it works good, it will be implemented in the other forums. If it crashes and burns, it won't be a big deal anyway since it won't have affected the majority of the site. Let me know your feedback.
Super! That is exactly the right way to do it - as a limited experiment at first to work out the wrinkles. I can think of various aspects, such as - should the thread starter be required to declare at thread-start time the moderation criteria he will use from a set of choices (relevancy only, relevance and quality of posts, or arbitrary)? - should a thread-starter be able to add self-moderation after the thread is going or only at thread start time? But any self-moderation approach is good to start with and such fine point issues will become obvious with time.
Probably a fairly effective way to downgrade the site's standing. Will see! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil
Whilst I agree the journals forum is where the owner has the most right to moderate, if you really want to put the idea to the test, do it in the TA forum. We will then see how fairly self-moderation works in a provocative environment, whether people will distinguish between healthy debate and nuisance posts. If that forum does not turn into People's Daily, then it just might work.
Awesome. MANY THANKS. Journals forum will be a great forum to start this. With time, you can decide - that you want to keep this self-moderation feature in some forums, whereas you want to not allow for self-moderation in other forums. A mix-and-match approach might work best.
Excellent, brother Baron. I think this will drive more posters to ET. I'd like to see this started in the Trading or Tech Analysis forums. Magna does a good job watching out for the Journals forum, already. Or, alternatively, as per your suggestion, maybe just start a completely separate "Self-Moderated" forum with threads pertaining to anything trading related. I can envision such a forum with much greater civility and where people can browse thru various trading topics and choose which to follow. On another front, I think you should make a special forum where only people who registered before the year 2000 get to post.