I think that in spite of the opportunity to misuse blocking, and also the impact to the quality of data, we need to be really careful about limiting the ability or effectiveness of blocking. Blocking on social media can be a personal safety measure, and it occurs to me that information that is visible in an observation can be used to identify the place where a person is located, even if the observation location data itself is obscured. Some organisms can only be found in certain areas, and other information in photos might also identify where a person is.
As much as I agree that overzealous blocking causes damage, the site needs to be able to protect its users.
This is a general observation, not a specific one, and I say this as someone who has relied on Joe (a lot) for IDs and has never had even the slightest issue, even when there’s disagreements over IDs (where I’m usually in the wrong ;). I also understand that marine invertebrates are under-observed and under-identified, so any misidentifications can have an outsized influence.
PS - Thanks Joe for your hard and underappreciated work