I think we're faced with a question of common sense against common humanity. Mud gets flung because folks tend to love a mud fight. If people ignored the flinger, the flinger would go elsewhere, because the flinger only really cares about the response.

The question of policing the threads rapidly becomes a two pronged problem. Someone has to spend a lot of time doing the policing, even installing a holding pen so that posts get sequestered for analysis by assigned 'masters'. If you try just revoking memberships, you have to justify what you do and people just change their names and re-up and the problem persists.

The best solution is for folks to learn what to ignore and plow ahead, responding to worthwhile posts.

It's a lot like life.