How about, for an interim/compromise solution, a degree of filtering? /ignore "monk" is too granular if you want to ignore a whole conversation, & /chatteroff isn't granular enough.

You could filter by creating a drop down in the nodelet, containing threads . & A-F. Then when the code displays entries in the CB, it could do  if ($_=~/^$cgi->param('cbfilter')){print $_}. In the form, you could prepend each utterance with the character currently set as the filter, then people could change their filter settings to filter themselves out. "." of course would be intended to match all of them (not sure if that regex would interpret the . as any character without trying it, but you get my drift).

That way the filter would persist in the form, but reset (to ".") each time you come to the monastery.