I agree with many of your points but just want to comment on this…
Not having an automated block feature is fine on small to medium sized forums but it is imo a must for large platforms.
This is, amongst other things, because more members equal more posts which potentially equal far more interpersonal issues developing. While a team of 10 moderators could easily ‘moderate’ forums with 10/20/30,000 members, as the member base grows everything else grows art a greater pace - more voices > many more posts > many more issues.
This is a major reason all the large social network platforms offer blocks. Another reason is from a legal standpoint - if someone reports they are being bullied by another member and the site does nothing about it (perhaps because they feel no bullying is occurring “it’s all in their mind”) but then that user commits suicide, the site could be liable. If somebody genuinely feels someone is bullying them then that’s how they feel - it doesn’t matter what you or I think. What matters is we have a duty of care towards members and one of the best ways to stop them feeling like that is if we cut that interaction - which is best done by allowing them to block people who are causing them distress themselves (or sometimes us imposing this on them).
The days of being judge and jury have long gone - and neither should we have to be. It’s not down to us to decide what is or is not causing others distress.
This is actually why I also think we need more modern moderation tools - moderators shouldn’t be put in the position where we are having to edit people’s posts (which most often see as censorship) if they are unacceptable we should just be able to remove them from view and ask them to edit it, with edits then put in a review queue.
I think (I hope!) Discourse can lead on this.