But that doesn't stop someone else, who's opinion differs from mine, from using the feature ON ME without my permission or without any communication and thus triggering me and impacting my ability to participate in this community, should the forums be affected at all.
That's all well and good, but no one needs your permission to block you. Yeah, sure, it sucks to not be able to discuss things with people, but their reason for potentially blocking you is their own and honestly, they shouldn't have to justify it.
Not to mention, all of the compromises we, in this thread have proposed, would really not impact anyone's gameplay AT ALL. Blocked users would still be able to click the user that blocked them. If someone chose to block you, you probably wouldn't even know. Your point of "I'd rather be ignored than unable to ask" is the same situation. How would you differentiate someone ignoring your PM vs your PM going into a spam box?
I wouldn't, and thats the point. What I'm fighting against is what I've seen some people suggest in the first place: That the option to PM dissapears altogether. And the spam box was my suggestion, so of course I'd be comfortable with it.
No justification is needed to simply ignore however when it gets to the point that a user is literally unable to post in a thread that is public and available to everyone else on site- then a justification matters. You cannot pick and choose who you give access to when something is public. You cannot discriminate like that. I find doing so to be immoral.
