In the Bulltrue case, the only reason I didn't immediately ban him and delete the thread was because several other members had already started to have fun with it before I got there.
Normally we'd prefer to pre-empt any sort of fun whatsoever.
Ben and I are on the same page: minimize the off-topic, obviously disruptive threads via the ban hammer & thread deletion. (As he said: this is EcoModder, not the town square.)