It's still lame; if the purpose of a thread, perhaps not everywhere but particularly in politics & society, is to present a problem or happening in the world and discuss it, then it becomes a moot point to make it self-moderated, to delete any dissenting opinions or remove people you dislike; what good is a conversation when only people you agree with may remain? It's little more than an echo: "Oh you agree with me? You can stay. You don't agree with me? Gtfo." Any other reason to moderate is rare and very well handled by mods; my only option in the case of self-moderated threads, as has always been the case as I often have uncommon opinions, is to recreate the same thread with the same topic without the self-moderation just to ensure posts can't be unfairly removed.
I see good uses for this in, for example, the marketplace, where discussion isn't the point; in this subforum, at least, it's a nuisance. Any chance certain boards can be excluded from this feature?
I'm not sure, but thats a pretty good point, perhaps bring that idea to Meta. I'm on the side where I find self moderation incredibly useful in certain senarios, like in the market like you said. I guess I didn't think about the implications of having self moderated threads in sections where the point is to express your individual ideas. I wouldn't figure people would use them here.
Then again, even in this section, I'm sure some people could use self moderation for good. For example, say you made a thread about Public Education, and then some spammers come in and start posting about how Wild Irish Rose was created by the republicans to exterminate the homeless. Would you delete their comments?
