The danger is that not everyone is a douchebag 100% of the time. It needs to be done in a way that doesn't impact the flow of information on the site, that's the tricky part . I don't have any suggestions for that at all.
You might have someone who has something useful to say who is being blocked by somone who needs that information. Blocks should be very easily reversed.
"unblock all" and "resume block" functions, maybe? A flag that comes in thread saying you're blocking some replies might work, then a "view blocked replies" button or something. Although if you make it too much a part of the forum though it becomes a kind of negative thing, I think.
It might also make for some very weird forum threads if you have people who are blocking one another heavily participating in the same thread. Things would become confusing fairly quickly for all. And the the fact that the two people were blocking each other would be apparent, which is also kind of a negative thing.
It would be nice to see it implemented somehow though.
Yeah they are very definite concerns... we'd have to think very carefully if we wanted this. It might be better if people just use the block function as it is, and then we deal with any problems that come up in the groups on an individual basis (via the report link etc)
