Yeah, good luck with that.

Are you the one who gets to decide what is controversial? What if the Usual Suspects start to bicker about one of your interests?
Will you be directing the "elves" on what belongs where? Are they going to take instruction from you. If that is your only enforcement you may be well advised to think of another strategy.

You are suggesting a very complicated strategy with a lot of moving parts. If you get your way there will be a lot of conflict over it. Have you ever asked a pair of people in conflict on this forum to try to find common ground, much less asking them to stay out of threads on their favorite subjects.

I'm sure that Max has thought about this longer and harder than you.

Why don't you go start your own forum with your own rules and report back on how it works?

Until then, we have a set of rules that the full forum has not accepted as of yet. As a group we can apply the rules to posts and thread titles. The moderators can close the odd thread that descends into hopeless bickering, as they have been doing show some patience, take it from there. Don't make extra work and headaches for the moderators.

I have found this forum to be a lot calmer and less vitriolic than it has been in a long time. Things are getting better. Give it some time. If you want to talk about about something, start a thread and respectfully ask for some ground rules, but nearly every thread can descend into bickering.