When a mailing list thread veers off topic, eventually the thread gets dominated by people yelling at others to stop it, which causes more people to get annoyed at the volume of messages and post metadiscussion about stopping the metadiscussion.
The only way to fix it is to stop posting about it. Your martyr argument about taking a stand is an interesting narrative, but ultimately the only thing that stops dramatic metadiscussion threads is once everyone has had their yelling out.