agreed it will most likely make bitcoin stronger, but i still think a threat center with X amount of people is a good idea. The people would be trusted users from all around. for examplle maybe 2 people from the bitcoin-otc, then 2 people from bitcointalk forums, 2 bitcoin devs,2 well known and big busnesses, and 2 big mining pools
Everyone will freak out, everything will turn out fine, and everything will go back to normal and people that follow up on the shock stories will find out that bitcoin is perfectly stable and is made to deal with this sort of thing.
Picking a group of people to manage or authenticate the blockchain is both not feasible, and not a workable idea. A voluntary model akin to what casascius suggested might work. But it would also rely on a voluntary model, for emphasis, a strictly voluntary model.
That all there, I think if several miners got together they could do this. Particularly a large pool could commit to one side of the chain and would effectively suggest where other miners should concentrate effort to keep their blocks valid. A large number of miners committing to a single chain could easily accrue majority of hashing power and make sure that everything heads in one direction.
In this case miners are suggested to switch back to 0.7 to mine on the more stable branch, merchants are suggested to avoid taking new money to prevent the transaction later being made invalid by a malicious party trying to double spend, and anyone else doesn't depend on the which blockchain "wins" at all and is advised to twiddle their thumbs, not panic, and wait as the world turns and things eventually smooth out.
