Reply #65: My chief and serious concern is the use of blocking to prevent full

[Nothing Without Hope]

and open discussion of controversial issues. I see it as an invitation to censorship and I strongly oppose it. Being able to see that a thread includes some blocked participants does not address the overriding issue of making sure that ALL relevant facts and viewpoints are available to people reading the thread. It would be all too simple for a person who backed a particular agenda and posted biased material to block the few people who might see the thread and had the initiative and knowledge to post rebuttals or additional evidence not otherwise cited. The result: conversion of discussion to propaganda and suppression of important information.

I believe the block feature is bad, seriously bad, for DU. Moderator alerts and the ignore feature already do the work of mitigating the efforts of trolls and other disruptive individuals. The block feature is both unnecessary and a dangerous tool for censorship.