They don't have flame wars as we know them over at places like CGTalk.  The moderating is far stricter than it is here.  Start flamewars there -- get kicked off the board.  I don't know if I'd call a policy like that "soft".  It sounds pretty hard-nosed to me.

About like the sitting judge when I was summoned for jury duty a couple of weeks ago.  He let us know up front that "he could lock us up" if we did anything untoward in his courtroom.

So one guy sat in his chair with a newspaper held up in front of his face -- a bailiff walked over and made him put the paper down......another guy's cell phone rang in the courtroom.  The phone was confiscated from him -- and he probably wasn't going to be getting it back.  Or so the court spokesman had expressly warned us in advance.  "Turn your cell phones off.  They are really serious about this in there."

So, yeah......some forums are run about like that courtroom.  At least the hardcore, top-end professional ones tend to be.

Something To Do At 3:00AM