I will say this: when I mute someone I am on my last straw. (The count's at two and one's a spammer.) HOWEVER, if someone I'd muted reached out to me reasonably politely and asked, I would try my best to give them a civil conversation. I might have to wait on replying to their post for a day or two to calm down and accurately determine what I wanted to say, but I would recognize that the person is willing to have a discussion and potentially work things out. And because of that I would try really, really hard to honor that. I'm not saying it would always work out, but I think this adds humanity to Hubski, which is something we advocate here. I would also be really happy that this work-out was happening in PMs and not in threads. Work things out one-on-one. I've been short with users sometimes and sent them messages, "Hey, nothing personal," or "hey, sorry if that was shitty, life's eating my shorts today." Usually, if you reach out to someone in person, they'll be more understanding.