I suspect that if I made block or mute temporary, there would have been backlash.

LOL you have demonstrated loudly and clearly that you don't care tho so sorry, you can't ever use that argument again.

I can see the value of the user-page blog thing, but it quickly becomes a whole other type of posting with all the formatting issues that brings.

Said the guy who created "chat" when "weather" wasn't interesting enough

I've considered that it might be interesting to give OPs the option to have chat or comments appended to their post and see what happens.

NO

Chat is ephemeral. Posts are not. You can't put a chat on a post because then the discussion about it becomes time-sensitive and subject to "who is looking at it right this moment."

I am under NDA, but I will say that one of the most stolid, staid and conservative platforms I use is rolling out a theme builder. It has absolutely nothing to do with the functionality of the software (which costs four to five figures depending on how it's configured) and everything to do with human factors engineering and the fact that we're all stuck in UIs all day long now.