"Please be civil, people" or, how to survive forum polarity.

I am a member of a health-related forum where hurt feelings and personal insults are rare. Though by no means not nearly as large as DU, the site does have a large membership and has been churning along for a decade.
The owner of the site always had a simple policy when dealing with threads that grew hostile. He would simply post the sentence "Please be civil, people" and that would be the end of it. Over time the members started doing it themselves, and it really seems to work. As far as I know, there are no moderators aside from the owner, and I have yet to see him delete a post.

I realize that one cannot compare many forums to DU, and that Internets Forum Polarity seems to be a given, but I do believe that the method I have described may be highly effective, even here.

specifically for the purpose of disrupting this place. Any political forum will have to deal with that. There are probably better ways to deal with it, but I don't see it happening; there is risk involved that you will get rid of the wrong people. I don't know how 'large' this site is...you can't go by the registration number because some people have been banned and many others register and then leave and don't post. Other sites that I am on post an 'active members' number alongside the 'registered members' number.

I try not to answer their posts; however, sometimes it is difficult to tell if they are posting to disrupt or not. If a poster has said something about Islam that I know to be incorrect, I try very politely to correct them; you can tell by their answers if they are truly interested in discussion or are only in it to stir things up.

and of course those standards can shift depending on the subject and/or the people involved.

Bryant

If the main focus of a board is something not political, it is easier to simmer things down if politics is broached, because everyone goes back to the main topic.

It has to do with an actor, and there are people of all political stripes there. We agreed that if someone posted something political that another person found hurtful, we stopped posting on that thread. Since the focus is NOT political, I felt this was fine-and, surprisingly enough, we still indulge in political discussions. One other interesting note: NONE of the people, conservative or liberal, at my board, which involves one of the other actors on Law & Order, seem to like Fred Thompson for President.