Bottom line, in my (cynical) opinion:

One guest of dubious sanity trolls.
40 or 50 (number pulled out of ass) members and maybe a couple other flamer-guests get involved respond.
This repeats, often with the same troll re-worded.
People still respond, over and over.
It seems there are folks far more concerned with their right to get their .02 in than what they could be doing to the forum. It's not going to change. It's the Internet after all, where it's more important to make a noise than to listen, more important to stand up and be counted rather than withold comment for the greater good.

Max has made a decision to try to stop it.
He can't get the huge mob of us who respond to each and every fucking troll to shut up, so he's trying to kill the "seeds" of the flame threads.