No one tool or combination is going to be a magic elixir. Anything that can be used can probably be abused as well. I'm pretty sure that the culture of the venue is a factor as well. What works for the ladies sewing circle may not work as well for a street gang. The fact is that tools like these are pretty commonplace in online communities. People here request them, especially when things get nasty. How well they would work, I don't know. The alternative is to do nothing and when the next round of bomb throwing erupts, there will be more calls for something to be done.

Personally, I somewhat doubt that they would cause widespread problems or abuse, simply because I think the problem is caused by a tiny minority of people. I think that most people don't fight most of the time, see the downside of quoting some inflamatory comment, and explain or ignore the occasional misinterpretation of their statements etc. Now warning and banning the few micreants would save a whole lot of trouble all around. That doesn't seem to happen here very often (which may be just as well for me :-) , but I don't know what goes on behind the scenes. I know one person once reported getting a suspension that surprised me. It may also be that they just don't see the problems often enough in real time. The report button might help there.

If they do implement the report button, I hope they make it clear that abuse of the 'abuse button' will not be tolerated. They can see who is reporting who - all kinds of predictive and analytic possibilities there but let's stick with reality. I can understand the negative arguments and I estimate the odds are in favor of nothing being done anyway, so see you here the next time around.  

 

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