The standard forum experience allows users to chose to completely ignore threads from their title alone - users don’t have to enter a thread in the first place to think hey, I’m not interested in that topic and will ultimately have nothing valuable to share. I think the main cause for any contention here is because instead of following the typical forum modus operandi we’re directing all topics of a certain nature into this one completely disjointed mammoth thread.
This sort of thread works perfectly when active discussion is naturally minimal (like the Giant Auction Thread which is nothing more than a hub for posting links and moving on), but in a setting where active discussion is encouraged it leads to a mangled mess which can only deteriorate over time.
Most major forum software has built in ways of allowing users to filter content, but unfortunately this thread is a side effect of using free forum software which doesn’t have that feature. At the end of the day this thread is nothing more than a bodge, and bodges generally fall apart over time.