Comment by TulliusCicero

I see this a fair amount, and yeah, "just let people block others" is really terrible moderation advice.

Besides the very reasonable expectation almost everyone has that assholes will be banned, the inevitable result of not banning assholes is that you get more and more assholes, because their behavior will chase away regular users. Even some regular users may start acting more like assholes, because what do you do when someone is super combative, aside from possibly leaving? You become combative right back, to fight back.