I'm a big softie at heart. In general, I don't like to see anyone banned, or censored, or censured from someplace like this that's supposed to be fun and edifying. Sometimes it is the lone voice sticking up for an idea that makes it happen, and the masses can be wrong. But in this case I have to agree with MBJ that DanB does not do much for the greater good with his posts. I'd like to think (even now) that he doesn't do it on purpose, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. To be belittled and told you are wrong by somebody who has never once demonstrated any better knowledge or initiative or research is very, very off-putting. It is extremely hard to keep ignoring such so-called dialogue when it's directed your way.
I would second the emotion that being able to filter one's view of the forum to just not include posts by a given individual is something we could use around here.
If a divisive member is banned, there's really not much stopping said member from re-signing under some new nick, which means very quickly the same problem could crop up again. With per-poster filtering, there's no incentive for the bad seed to do anything but continue to post under his or her original nick, because it's not known who's filtering and who's not.
I hope said filtering is technically feasible -- compared to other forum software, whatever's being used here sometime seems clunky (like not being automatically subscribed to threads you start, for one thing). With this sort of personalized filtering, DanB can continue to post what he likes, and those who don't want to see it, won't. Ahh... peaceful.