I don't know how well the self-administered OT flag would work. Personally, I'd probably never filter out OT because thread drift by itself isn't bad. Of course, I usually enjoy the way things are free wheeling around here and a post about the latest NVIATWAS can get into gender stereotypes or whatever. That's fun and interesting. A lot of the strife isn't necessarily because of OT, it's someone with a bizarrely religious zeal about one aspect of the discussion. I may be focusing on one or two recent threads too much, but that seems to be the case. Trusting the author to flag their comments as OT in such cases may be too much to hope for.

I think a warning flag and/or deleting posts would be sufficient - especially if 'warned' posts could be filtered out in our prefs. I trust Basicwiz to use those effectively. Hopefully most of us would take the hint and be more careful if warned/deleted. Probably nothing short of ejection would deter a few but at least the ability to not see their antics would help stop things getting out of control. I do admit to taking perverse amusement in seeing how wacky things can get (as long as I can resist getting drawn in) get but even I can live without it :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken