Reasonably limited topic bans, even unfairly or mistakenly applied, aren’t all that bad though. And frankly some people do need them.
Do you think we should moderate hijacks?
Assuming you do, what do you think should be done with a poster who regularly hijacks threads to be about his particular hobby horse?
This isn’t about hijacks, it’s about banning people from talking about things even when they are on topic. Bringing up statism and using a Libertarian analysis is on topic in any thread about government.
As for how you should deal with hijacks, you should ignore the content of the hijack except insofar as it is off topic. Someone who hijacks ten times on the same subject should be treated the same as someone who hijacks ten times on ten different subjetcs.
I disagree. If someone keeps bringing up unrelated things, whether the same thing repeatedly or many other things, there are rules to prevent that. What a topic ban does is not stop someone from hijacking or threadshitting - those are already forbidden - but prevents them from talking about specific topics even when that topic is the subject of the discussion. In the case of Will Farnaby, this was to prevent the use of a Libertarian analysis of political and economic issues, for whatever reason.
Then you are either posting in the wrong thread, or posting using the wrong example.
I agree that the topic ban was problematic almost by design. I agree that the warning in the thread on state secrets was poor. I think the response to the Pet Strikes Back was personal.
However, in general, I think topic bans if properly applied and fairly interpreted are a very useful tool.
ETA: Obviously what “properly” means is open to interpretation. I think they should be rare and limited to either the super obsessive or the super dangerous/misleading. I don’t think they need to be applied to the merely annoying because it’s very easy to scroll past what you don’t want to read.
Show me an example of Will’s Libertarian analysis, please, I must have missed it.
I disagree, but lets leave that to the side for now.
I agree - a poster who has racked up a number of notes for constantly posting on random off-topic subjects will be told to knock it off, and will eventually get banned if they don’t listen. And a poster who has racked up a number of notes for constantly posting on the same off-topic subject will also be told told to knock it off, and will be banned if they don’t listen.
But you have told people pre-emptively that they cannot opine on certain subjects, even if it is completely germane to the OP (or, presumably, even if they write the OP).
He made a very reasonable post in that thread about extrajudicial sanctions, and then followed it up with a post that criticized the existence of espionage laws. It’s kind of threadshitting, really.
If you posted a thread about “What as US military options in Syria?” and someone chimed in with, “The military is evil!” I would not be surprised if mods jumped in. Why should someone already on notice get free passes to threadshit?
In different circumstances with general topic bans, yes. But that is not what is at play here. The instructions to Will were specific. He was prohibited from interjecting topics of statism, authoritarianism, or the combination in unrelated threads.
If the threads were related, he could have at it. He could start his own threads about those topics. What he couldn’t do was continue to hijack threads. If those ideas, or general libertarian philosophy was germane to the thread or related to ongoing discussion, then the instructions would not apply.
As I asked in post #105:
16 2/3 years and counting. It seems the powers that be aren’t very good at this.
No, the poster in question was warned for posting on-topic because of a topic ban, and a topic ban that was so vague that until that warning it was not clear that it should even apply to on-topic posts.
Interesting that you would say that the example I use in the first post of a thread I started is either the wrong thread or the wrong example, though. Are you sure you know what thread you’re posting in?
This is incorrect. WillFarnaby was not posting on-topic in that thread; he was hijacking it.
I have not been seen as a “problem poster” nearly that long. It was just last December that I first got Pitted, although the OP of that thread did say it was “a little bit overdue”. Since then, they have been slowly turning up the heat, including a recent suspension.
Do you accept any responsibility for what has happened?
The only way I’ll buy into the conspiracy theories is if Steophan and SlackerInc get a topic ban on posting about topic bans.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Good one 
Since you appear to believe that the moderation staff is dishonest and malevolent, perhaps you’d be happier in a different online community? You don’t seem to be happy in this one.
Only for the one I self-reported, because I insulted someone due to having a brain fart and thinking I was posting in the Pit, only realizing my mistake after the edit window was closed. That I self-reported and still got an official warning, no leniency at all, pretty well illustrates the problem.