First of all, let me say to Admin and the moderators, thank you for all the work you do to keep this board going. Yours is a thankless job and I don't think a lot of people realize how much work is required behind the scenes.
I've read all of the posts on this thread and here's my 2 cents for whatever it is worth. I'm wondering if you could make a separate category for 1. Jokes and 2. Prayer requests -- sort of like you have a heading for Main, Introduce Yourself, Recipes, etc. For news regarding those bad things that happen to us all, could you make a section titled something like I Need to Vent? That way, folks could choose to visit whatever headings they want (for example, I usually only visit Chit Chat, Pictures and Main).
For repeat offenders, I suppose the only thing to solve the problem would be banning them. Perhaps for a day the first offense (with a pm explaining why), a week the second and permanently the third.
Someone, I don't remember who, posted a suggestion about having a calendar so we could send the moderators info about birthdays, etc to be posted. I think that's a wonderful idea.