Stacy Horn's book Cyberville has an interesting discussion about using that approach on ECHO in the late-80s/early-90s as well, though in that case it was also tied up with a very anti-banning ideology (the cyberspace-as-unfettered-discussion idea that was popular in WELL-influenced circles). They experimented with various versions of totally-unrestricted forums, giving people their own forums for weird topics, stronger and weaker on-topic enforcement, etc. In a few cases they seem to have eventually decided to ban people, despite the initial reluctance, because some of the diversion measures just didn't work. Not sure how well it generalizes, but it's an interesting read for the $0.01 price of a used copy.