Thanks for the update, highly informative and thoughtful as usual. I apologize if this subject has become tiresome, but I would like to mention that my proposal did not make it into your recap and the negatives you mention don't seem to apply. The idea is to let anyone comment wherever they like, and people can simply choose not to see comments from users they don't care for. The affected user need not even know that anything changed. This, I think, solves a lot of issues. Preventing someone from commenting is like painting over graffiti: it motivates more. Much better to leave the graffiti on the wall, where people who like graffiti can see it, but make it invisible to people who don't like it. Muting currently works on the fairly arbitrary basis of which user happens to post an article. None of us browse Hubski exclusively on our own posts, so we are all dependent on other users having similar moderation preferences (and many users never mute anyone). Probably we spend more time on the posts of others, so for the majority of the time our mute settings are ineffective. For lurking users or people who only comment, the current mute option is completely useless. The worst consequence I can think of is that there will sometimes be a little gap in the discussion where I see some comments, then a hidden comment from someone I don't like, then more comments. This sounds like an ideal outcome, but if I do want to see the complete conversation a single click on the hidden comment makes it visible {demo}. Even the worst-case-scenario of a determined "dickwad" commenter is not intolerable. One click hides all the offending comments from me, everywhere, but the troll is none the wiser, making it far easier for me to follow the ignore-and-do-not-feed rule.
Someone once went to the local train station of my childhood town and painted a swastika there out of human feces. In your analogy, if it were possible for passers-by to decide not to see (or smell) that graffiti on the wall (AFTER seeing it once), you think it would be preferable to leave the fecal symbol up on the wall on principle. We could all disable the sight and smell of the swastika. However, every person who passed by without being warned would get an eyeful and accompanying noseful of literal racist shit. And for many, this would have been their first impression of my town. In this way, you invite in people who are excited by a community that enables a racist shit-smearer as their welcoming committee. You drive away people who don't appreciate the sight or smell of literal racist shit. You still think it's better not to paint over the graffiti?
Like most ideas, my proposal has costs and benefits. I don't argue that it gets perfect results, only that it is better than the current situation. Let's test it with your scenario. Today, if someone joins the site and posts a hateful, offensive comment, nothing stops them. The comment is visible to all users, forever. If it is offensive enough, the admins may step in and disable the account, but I expect this to happen rarely. The hateful, offensive person continues to exist. Under my proposal, if someone joins the site and posts a hateful, offensive comment, nothing stops them. If it is offensive enough, the admins may step in and disable the account, but I expect this to happen rarely. The comment is visible to all users, unless they click on the username and check a box saying "I prefer not to see comments from this user." After which they no longer see the offensive comment or any other comments from that user. The hateful, offensive person continues to exist. The standard rule for dealing with trolls is to pay them no attention.
I'm capable of paying no attention to racist comments, and I don't even need the mute option. The problem is that when I see, say, a racist comment, I know that a lot of people probably lost interest in the site upon seeing it. And those people, not the racists, are the ones I would like to be in an online community with. Not only that, but a safe haven for trolls will draw enough trolls that I see racist comments frequently. On Reddit, in the default subs, you can meet a new racist every day. The personal blocking option doesn't scale.