Honestly, Wayne.... I tend to think you're kind of stuck with the trolls for the time being. It's kind of a cycle, and trying to manipulate that cycle only seems to make it worse.
I've seen it time and again, from back in Usenet to old BBS to modern forums.
A new forum starts... Things are good. New users arrive, and friendships are formed. But as time goes on, cliques form. They form their own 'in jokes' etc, and turn a bit on people who aren't in their group. The people outside that group then resent the group, and purposefully troll to irratate the in group... Eventually, everyone grows bored, the forum sits underused for a while, and then slowly picks back up again, only to restart the cycle.
Right now, I'd say the "Talk about" area is getting near the stage where everyone is growing bored. Let it go another couple months, and it should start healing itself.
The more you try to control people into acting a certain way, the more they're going to act against your attempts. Unfortunatly, it seems to be human nature. To me, it's the right call to have a single mostly unmoderated forum, while patrolling the rest. I think if you start policing the talk about too much, the problems are going to spill out to the rest of the site.
