Quote - I can't say I care much for your option 2 because it's open to abuse.  I know for a damn fact I'd abuse it, even though I believe myself to be a basically fair and reasonable person.  Still, it's an interesting point.  :) 

At your very most abusive, how badly could you abuse the right to moderate your own post? What specific dangers are there and what would be the effect to the tone of the forum? At a general level, it's always a little unnerving to give people power. It's one of the reasons why democracies are scary. If you trust people to be responsible enough to initiate posts and comment on posts, letting them moderate their own posts isn't the most frightening thing in the world.

In real world forums, the person speaking not only has the right to moderate what is discussed, but is expected to be responsible for keeping order. A person pulling together a meeting chooses who should and should not be invited. The person holding the floor is supposed to keep the meeting on topic and cut down on side conversations that are disrupting the flow of the meeting. What I'm suggesting is giving the topic starter the same responsibility to keep the thread on topic that a speaker would have in real life.

The worst abuse I can imagine is people that don't like each other will start locking each other out of their respective threads. On a surface level, that's not friendly. From a forum level, that will cut down on fights. Separating two people that don't like each other isn't always a bad thing. I'd imagine that most of the moderators can name two people here (not looking for any specifics) that clearly don't like each other. When those two people comment on the same post, there's a better than average chance that there will be some heated exchanges. Letting them block each other is common on social networking sites.It helps keep the peace.

Contrary opinions might be stifled. This isn't a political or religious forum. This is a software forum, so there shouldn't be that many topics that are controversial. Allowing topic starters to moderate their own topics is not the same thing as allowing them to control the entire forum. A view being blocked from a thread can be a new thread. The majority of threads here aren't controversial and won't receive much if any moderation from the thread starter.  It takes time to moderate a topic, so the general preference will be to not moderate until it's necessary.

There will be complaints--especially at the beginning, about overly heavy handed moderating by a thread starter. A hundred people will have a hundred different styles. Tell the complainers to start their own posts and then they can moderate what's said in their threads. Let's just accept that thread starters have the most active interest in what is said in their threads. In the long run, the greatest volume of complaints won't be against overly moderated threads, but against those that aren't. Some posters won't bother policing their threads and those are the ones where arguments will have time to fester. Since infighting will not be tolerated in most threads, the ones that do occur will be that much more noticeable.

Under the current system moderation occurs after the riot is in full swing. Give thread starters a means to police their own threads and there will be less riots.

Besides, how often do we open a thread that sounds interesting only to see that it has wandered so far off the original subject that it was a waste of time wading through the side conversations? Sometimes the thread starter tries to get back to the original topic, but others are wrapped in the peripheral trains of thougjht. A forum moderator won't step in as long as the post is civil. The topic starter currently has no means to keep things on track.

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