I've had the idea before that a group of LWers keen to start an inflammatory political argument could help keep LW cool by having the argument on an unrelated, pre-existing, general politics forum. They could link the argument on the Open Thread so the rest of us know it's happening.

Possible advantages & disadvantages:

• fewer political flame-outs on LW...
• ...more political flame-outs on Unnamed Other Forum
• other forum posters would likely have worse argumentative norms...
• ...but you could look for a forum with relatively good norms to minimize this (a pre-existing LW-affiliated blog/network, or a traditional rationalist/sceptic forum with a politics subforum?)
• LWers modelling good argumentative norms to strangers might get the strangers to up their own game...
• ...or social contagion might happen in the other direction, with LWers regressing towards the mean for online political arguments
• has the trivial inconvenience of requiring LWers to register on another forum and post there, even as they continue to post other stuff here...
• ...but maybe a trivial inconvenience is what you want if you think the marginal LW political argument has net negative value
• could be interpreted as a forum invasion...
• ...but it's not like LWers are trolls, and only a few LWers would likely bother with this anyway, so they'd probably blend into a bigger on-topic forum without much fuss
• might entrench misinterpretations of "Politics is the Mindkiller"
• in the unlikely event this became a firmly established norm, LWers might start demanding threads be taken elsewhere at the least scent of politics