My impression is that the material covered on OB/LW is more than sufficient to allow people that really understand the material to talk politics without exploding. I don't think we need any politics specific tricks for those that are likely to be helpful contributors.

This came up in the Santa Barbara LW meetup, and I felt like that group could have talked politics the right way. The implicit consensus seemed to be "Yeah, it'd probably work", though we didn't try.

Of course, with a smaller group and stronger selection pressures it is less likely to have a group member or two that can't hold it together when compared to a larger and online community (ie LW).

To summarize: I think there are plenty of people here that can handle it, but probably enough that can't to ruin it if there aren't any preventative measures. Hopefully a merciless downvoting policy will be enough, but failing that, I'm sure we could come up with a way to select a subset of people that are allowed to talk politics.