Originally posted by addaction here (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?postid=222897#post222897)
Perhaps we should setup an arbitration panel on WHT to deal with these things :)

Perhaps we should. Obviously it wouldn't have any legal standing, but we could archive the opinions for people to look through in the future, and it might shut down some of the flamewars... since I think it would be quite reasonable for the mods to shut down any threads arguing about a matter which had already been arbitrated upon.

Does anyone want to nominate themselves to serve on such a panel? My only related experience is on an university disciplinary appeals board (hey, we could expel students from the university), but I'd be happy to serve.

the moderators are the panel? ;)

While I admire the wishful thinking in setting something like this up, I just don't see how it could actually work. Flamers are flamers. For the most part, they flame because they enjoy it, not necessarily because they care about the topic at hand. Think of it as a personality disorder.

If the people we're all thinking about were the type of people who would listen to an "arbitration panel", then they would also listen to the same members & moderators in the current threads.

I think the better answer is to remind people about the "ignore" feature found in the vbulletin profile & that there is no rule that you have to read every single post in the forums. If a flame war erupts in a thread & that upsets you, just skip that thread.