I don't consider that very extreme considering the persistent harassment by someone who, as far as I could tell by the mailing list archive and Overstreet's Pat

I don't consider that very extreme considering the persistent harassment by someone who, as far as I could tell by the mailing list archive and Overstreet's Patreon, was wrong about the subject matter and insisted on it multiple times, with ascending levels of agression each iteration. Personally, I would take such an insult as a signal to step away from the immediate conversation and maybe rethink it after some time, but this (admittedly very flamewar provoking and somewhat rude) way of pressing the RESET button on a conversation is understandably not tolerated in the same capacity as it might have been in the 1990s. The problem is, we haven't really replaced it with anything that's as efficient.