Extend usage of slow mode to fight battle of "live chat"

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@Ty1

Currently, our moderators spot “hot topics” (topics became live chat) and make them in slow mode manually. The problem is, since not all existing topics are in slow mode, other topics that are not in slow mode bump up and become live chat again.

I am open to automating this, so topics get forced into slow mode automatically. But please help me decide:

• how does the system know when to switch to slow mode?
• what data points does the system look at to decide to switch to slow mode?