An interesting thought, Sapo. So, like, we’d allow that people who start a thread can limit the tone of the thread, by some designation in the title. We’ve actually had a few instances of that in the past, usually in the OP rather than in the title: e.g., “please confine this discussion to…” Sometimes it works, sometimes not. When someone deviates from the OP’s dictum, sometimes the mods pull the thread back on course, sometimes not. All pretty much situational.
A person who posts about how they were fired (your example) and wants the responses limited to “poor, poor me”… well, I don’t think the other posters or mods will necessarily comply with that request.
The only problem, frankly, is celebrity death threads, frankly. On the one hand, there is tragedy in any death, and we should be respectful. On the other hand, we’re talking about celebrities, and critique of their lives or work seem to be fair game.
Our decision has always been that we distinguish between an obituary (“Paul Newman is dead”) and an elegy(“My mother died.”) An obituary is a public announcement, a reflection on the person’s life, positive and negative; criticism/critique are acceptable. An elegy is part of the mourning process, an expression of grief and sorrow; negative comments are not (generally) acceptable.
In an obituary thread, some one could post “Paul Newman was really a terrible person.” They would be entitled to their opinion (however wrong-headed), and allowed to express it. However, in an elegy, anyone posting, “Your mother was a terrible person” would be rude, inconsiderate, impolite, a jackass and a jerk – and thus against the rules.
That’s where we’ve always come out, anyhow. I don’t think that posting some special code word in the thread title will change that, one way or 'tother. It’s usually pretty clear which thread is what. (Someday, we’ll have the child of a celebrity posting about the death, and I don’t know how we’ll handle that one. I guess we’ll deal with it when we have to.)