At this point, there should be little doubt that the best response to this "basilisk" would have been "That's stupid. Here are ten reasons why.
That would only be the best response if the basilisk were indeed stupid, and there were indeed ten good reasons why. Presumably you do think it is stupid, and you have a list of reasons why; but you are not in charge. (I hope it is obvious why saying it is stupid if you believed it was not, and writing ten bad arguments to that effect, would be monumentally stupid.)
But Eliezer's reason for excluding such talk is precisely that (in his view, and he is in charge) it is not stupid, but a real hazard, the gravity of which goes way beyond the supposed effect on the reputation of LessWrong. I say "supposed" because as far as I can see, it's the clowns at RationalWiki who are trying to play this up for all it's worth. Reminds me of The Register yapping at the heels of Steve Jobs. The recent links from Stross and Marginal Revolution have been via RW. Did they just happen to take notice at the same time, or is RW evangelising this?
The current deletion policy calls such things "toxic mindwaste", which seems fair enough to me (and a concept that would be worth a Sequence-type posting of its own). I don't doubt that there are many other basilisks, but none of them have appeared on LW. Ce qu'on ne voit pas, indeed.
RW didn't push this at all. I have no idea why Warren Ellis latched onto it, though I expect that's where Charlie Stross picked it up from.
The reason the RW article exists is because we're getting the emails from your distressed children.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.