Freedom of speech man, there are always going to be people who annoy you or chat incessantly about things that are mundane or pointless to you, but it is their right to do so, if they are spamming the same message repeatedly or using foul or abusive language then report them, for everything else....it is an MMO its always gonna happen people want attention, the more you give them the longer they will continue to do these things.
And to be completely honest if your spending that much time watching general chat your doing it wrong, /pvp for rwz/wz /3 for trade why would one even need general chat? guild spam? noobs that haven't realized that group finder > spamming for groups?