In this case both Monsoon and John are totally aware that issues of forum moderation don't have to do with free speech- they both made that point in their posts earlier. I guess they just got excited about the topic
I think there is an appropriate parallel to be made though, especially in getting back to Dvivid's question and my/Josh's replies. Whose responsibility is it to deal with posts that are inflammatory and attention seeking? On here they're usually not outright threatening or hateful, so they're only violating forum rules in the weakest possible way. Some people see this as the responsibility of the moderator- maybe to eventually suspend or ban users who chronically violate the sort of peripheral forum guidelines. I can understand this point of view and don't have anything against it.
Personally, I think someone who came to this forum for the very first time could identify users who exhibit trolling behavior on the board within one or two such posts, and regard them as such pretty easily from then on. It doesn't have to affect the quality of the board. The trouble starts when users give in to the temptation to engage and respond to inflammatory posts. It should be obvious after a while that this is pointless, and it only perpetuates a problem that's easy to identify and ignore if you have some willpower (or use the add foe button ).
I think this is an interesting topic. There are a lot of ways of moderating forums and blog reply sections, and there are definitely benefits to both sides of the issue.