Agree 100%, and I would also add that OP's hierarchy seems to be aimed directly at cryptohunter, as it seems to be on the money (don't know about Theymos responding to him, however).  So I don't think trolling starts off as ignorance--it starts off as trying to get a rise out of people, which is exactly why you should not give them the response they're looking for.  

Yes, I think self-moderated threads ought to be an option everywhere that makes sense for them to be.  In Auctions, obviously you don't want that, but in Meta I think it's reasonable.  As far as 'freedom of speech' goes, I'm all for it but this is a forum and not a government imposing limits.  It always amazes me that people think the 1st Amendment to the US constitution means that one private citizen can't censor another.  That's not it at all.  It's a protection from the government itself doing the censorship, and not even under all circumstances.

I will say that one of the things I really like about bitcointalk is the lack of censorship as far as language and ideas go.  However, when you've got someone derailing threads as much as cryptoscunter has been lately--AND with all the shitposts being flung about--self-moderated threads are extremely useful.  

There was a consensus a while back that one of the ways to fight spam was to make new threads self-modded, but it never really caught on as a widespread thing.  I think it should have, and I've made most of my recent threads self-moderated.  Guess what?  I haven't actually had to delete more than 1-2 posts out of all of them.  Bounty hunters, even if they're interested in the thread, probably won't post in it because they know there's a strong chance of that post getting deleted (and thus they won't get paid for it).  If there was anything on bitcointalk resembling a spammer-spray, that would be it.