Voting Mechanism for Threads/Messages

I have received complaints about the quality of some of the threads and messages posted to the forum these days.

If I see a thread that is out of control, I can and do mark it as Read-Only. This effectively shuts down the thread. However, I just don't see a majority of the rogue threads.

So, my question is, should we try to inhibit the noise and improve the quality of the responses in some way? For example,

• We could institute a weighted voting system of some kind to limit the noise. Threads with too many negative votes would be closed (read-only). Messages with too many negative votes would be removed.
• We could require forum users to login to reply to message threads. I would only want to do this if we can make it painless for legitimate users.

Let me know your thoughts and feelings on this.

Jon