I’ll just say first that I’m sympathetic to what you are expressing in the whole of your post, but I snipped parts of the post to address them specifically.
First, yes, if everyone treats it as the harmless dude that isn’t hurting anyone, that would be fine. If there is a concerted effort to convince people to not respond to an individual poster, that would probably draw attention. It does seem strange, but the way I see it is that while a specific instance that is clear cut it seems strange to restrict individual posters from saying to ignore someone, in the larger context of things, it can lead to a place where there is widespread efforts to shun individual posters. One instance may be okay, but I don’t think pervasive campaigns to shun other posters is conducive to discussion. There have been times where people have done this themselves I think in an appropriate way, and also in an inappropriate way. **LHoD **has in my recent memory done this well, and I’ve noted other posters like **BPC **when I think they’ve crossed the line.
When I look at it, I ask if we would be okay if the behavior is repeated by many posters, all the time throughout many threads. I don’t think so and the way to address it is to not allow this type of shunning to take hold. This isn’t to say that such derailing behavior is acceptable. I think the appropriate way to address it is to report it and let mods step in.
I’m not opposed to putting the kibosh on JAQing off, and quickly curtailing pointless focus on minutiae so if those things are reported, then we can take a look. There have been multiple times where I’ve interceded for JAQing, and put on guide rails to avoid getting hung up on minutiae. Both of these things present challenges for moderation though. If a person asks questions and people respond, that looks a lot like actual discussion even if it may not be the highest caliber. If a person points out some minutiae and people respond, that can be organic flow of a discussion even if it may not be very interesting or relevant. If a person does this repeatedly and no one responds, I’m much more likely to intercede than if the conversation is naturally flowing that way. It seems counter intuitive so I’m not sure if that’s the best approach, but that’s how I’ve thought about it thus far.