I flat DARE you to open a forum where NO flaming and NO trolling... No foul Langauage etc... are the hard and fast rules...
MOST of your mods will be completely incapable of participating; which is going to make it fairly difficult for them to be objective in their function as 'moderators...'
Cut a sticky which defines FLAMING, TROLLING, FOUL LANGUAGE, Etc..
What you're going to find is that the "Moderate position" is destroyed... that the Centrists will have their asses handed to them at every point and that the "FORBIDDEN ISSUES" will come to the table for debate and that YOUR STATED POINT OF VIEW ON THESE ISSUES will be eviscerated...
You're trying to moderate THOUGHT, Admin... Not the means by which that thought is imparted... which is to say that while you seem to believe that the problem is the WAY the debate takes place; that the means by which the participants engage in debate, in and of itself, creates "EXTREMISM"... the fact is you simply 'feel' that some conclusions which contest your own, on your pet issues are wrong; and that your patented 10-15 word quips aren't accepted on the same authority as 'The Sacred Tablets' ... makes ya nuts...
But PULEASE! I am BEGGING YOU! Open a FORUM FOR PURE DEBATE... DEFINE THE RULES CLEARLY...
Towards that end, I suggest that the basic rules for formal debate be posted... that invalid reasoning be established as disqualifying argument... fallacies of every stripe, to include non sequiturs, the litanny of ad hoc conclusions, ad hom, ingorantum, populum...
Require that where an assertion of reason is advanced and challenged that where the member fails to support it through reasoned argument they must withdraw or condede... and that where they fail to formally rescind the assertion that they concede by default; and where such is determined, where they return to the point, they are banned from the thread... and where an assertion of fact is advanced, citiations from credible resources sustaining that assertion must be provided and so on...
Let the games... BEGIN!