A basic problem in liberal (as in laissez-faire) politics is conflict aversion; victims of bullying are frequently treated worse than their antagonists, because it's less work. That creates perverse incentives, to put it mildly.
What I won't sign onto is an endless series of septic threads maintained just to illustrate how inadequate the moderating response to this problem is.
Individual flagging does not work to recover toxic threads. Flags are too slow and too invisible. By the time the worst stuff gets knocked down, its authors --- almost all of whom have no meaningful reputation on this site --- have reached the win condition of having guided the thread into hellish nerd litigation in which even the reasonable people grappling with the issues are made to write comments that serve trollish ends.
Flagging is what we have, and I'll continue to do it just like you will. But it does not work. It is inadequate to the task. This problem requires sitewide intervention, and until that happens, it is a rational, reasonable, moral choice to flag this stuff off the site as a harm mitigation mechanism.
My basic disagreement is that 'just ignore it' and 'don't do things that attract their attention' are not viable strategies for target populations, and it's unjust to systematically shift the burden of responsibility from persistent antagonists to their victims.
I'm interested in your programmatic approach, but let's talk about that offsite.
A la the multireddit feature, if I could combine the page views & upvotes, and filter out the flags & downvotes, of you and everyone you recommend in your profile, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't see the trolls, flamewars.
I used to moderate forums. Major chore. The notion of just following people you like, trust would remove a lot of the moderator's make work.
I think the "until" is "until all readers of this site share a single sociological view on controversial issues and/or lose all interest in having their view heard." Asking your moderation tools to solve societal problems or prevent a discussion forum from reflecting a raging societal debate is trying to hide from the problem.
> it only takes 2-3 misogynist trolls to create a 300-comment shitshow
I get what you mean, but would argue that, "it only takes 2-3 trolls plus 300 people who respond to them to create a 300-comment shitshow". An ignored troll is a powerless troll. They get their power to disrupt from the responses, not their words.
I like this idea, but I don't think it's possible to get the shared agreement you discuss. I've never seen an online community where the hands-off, community-ignore method worked. Have you seen one?