We can't request this action from theymos because he wants traffic on this forum and such members generate huge traffic of bitcointalk. High traffic means higher cost of ads on the website, i.e. high revenue for theymos. Forum runs on servers and has costs, moderators need money too (I remember hilariousandco said that they are paid according to their work).
The forum sits on ~1250 Bitcoin and theymos already said it doesn't need money, and he doesn't personally need to profit of it either (I'm too lazy to find back the posts). I don't think high traffic is a priority. Instead, the forum's mission is to be "as free as possible".
Maybe theymos wants to use forum funds for other good things?
Check this!I amn't 100% sure what theymos said about signatures but one thing that comes to my mind is that signature campaign drives a huge traffic on this forum and is the major part of forum's ecosystem. By removing sigs, forum will lost traffic and high traffic = profit. Also, I remember that Roger Ver wanted to add signature campaign on forum.bitcoin.com in order to boost the website's traffic and make his forum more popular.
Btw this forum has "ignore" function. I think the best alternative will be if theymos adds "hide" function and we won't even see users and their posts once they are hidden for us.
I don't think I have the patience to hit ignore for every new user that comes along. Multiply the effort by all active users and you've effectively wasted cumulative years of work on what amounts to swatting a few flies away... which come back swarming every time.
We need more users like DannyHamilton, he made the
huge ignore list on this forum.
Also, direct answer to OP's idea (quote from theymos):
One reason that I was hesitant to do this before is that there are an awful lot of newbie restrictions, and I don't want the forum to be unwelcoming to good newbies.