The reason we did this is because ever since the ban function was introduced in LJ in the first place, people have been confused about where it applies and when. I've been handling problems between users for nearly 20 years now, and it's very rare that someone intuitively understands that a ban is only applicable in their own journal. It's also 2019, and websites *need* a way for people to say "don't let this person contact me on this website, ever". The changing social media landscape and the way that harassment techniques have developed across the internet mean that harassment and abuse doesn't just happen in people's journals anymore -- DW has a lot of anti-abuse benefits that, say, Twitter doesn't have, but on Twitter it's still possible to block someone so that they'll never be able to contact you again, and there have been multiple abuse cases in the last few years where the lack of the site wide ban on DW has made it difficult or impossible for someone to stop the abuse they're getting. (Someone picks an entry or comment their target made in a community and continues replying to them because it's a way to further contact after they've been banned, etc.)
This change doesn't stop someone from participating in the same community as someone who's banned them -- it just stops someone from using a community entry or comment to evade a ban in a personal journal. If someone uses banning to stop debate or criticism in a community entry that they made, the person they banned can just post a new top level entry and post whatever they were going to post. This also doesn't stop the banned person from responding to other people in a discussion of the person who banned them wasn't the original poster of the entry -- if Alice posts an entry, and Bob comments to that entry, Carol would only be blocked *from replying directly to Bob* if Bob has banned her. Carol can still post a top level comment replying to Alice , and she could reply to Dave if Dave replied to Bob. So, if someone who has blocked you makes a post in a community, and you want to reply to their points, you can make a new post; if someone who has blocked you leaves a comment in someone else's post and you want to reply, make a new thread or reply to someone who's replied to them.
The idea is basically that we're working on closing loopholes of ways that someone who was banned can force an email notification to go to the person who banned them, and the example we're using as a mental model of how to decide where banning should apply is " If Alice has a restraining order against Bob that specifies he may not contact her in any way, including online, what else do we need to change so the only action Alice has to take to make sure Bob can't violate the restraining order on Dreamwidth is to ban him once". (This is, sadly, a real situation that we've been asked about multiple times, and there's been more than one "Alice" who has had to go back to the court that issued the restraining order to have "including through contact on social media" added when it wasn't on the default order and "Bob" is replying daily or even hourly to an old community post or comment of hers that he found.)
Anti-abuse features can never have an opt out, I'm afraid, but I really don't think this will be as disruptive as you think it will be! And if it is, we can reconsider or make further changes to how things work to fix the disruptive bits. But this is probably the #1 change we've been asked for in terms of abuse prevention features, by users and community admins alike.
Re: Issue 2329
This change doesn't stop someone from participating in the same community as someone who's banned them -- it just stops someone from using a community entry or comment to evade a ban in a personal journal. If someone uses banning to stop debate or criticism in a community entry that they made, the person they banned can just post a new top level entry and post whatever they were going to post. This also doesn't stop the banned person from responding to other people in a discussion of the person who banned them wasn't the original poster of the entry -- if Alice posts an entry, and Bob comments to that entry, Carol would only be blocked *from replying directly to Bob* if Bob has banned her. Carol can still post a top level comment replying to Alice , and she could reply to Dave if Dave replied to Bob. So, if someone who has blocked you makes a post in a community, and you want to reply to their points, you can make a new post; if someone who has blocked you leaves a comment in someone else's post and you want to reply, make a new thread or reply to someone who's replied to them.
The idea is basically that we're working on closing loopholes of ways that someone who was banned can force an email notification to go to the person who banned them, and the example we're using as a mental model of how to decide where banning should apply is " If Alice has a restraining order against Bob that specifies he may not contact her in any way, including online, what else do we need to change so the only action Alice has to take to make sure Bob can't violate the restraining order on Dreamwidth is to ban him once". (This is, sadly, a real situation that we've been asked about multiple times, and there's been more than one "Alice" who has had to go back to the court that issued the restraining order to have "including through contact on social media" added when it wasn't on the default order and "Bob" is replying daily or even hourly to an old community post or comment of hers that he found.)
Anti-abuse features can never have an opt out, I'm afraid, but I really don't think this will be as disruptive as you think it will be! And if it is, we can reconsider or make further changes to how things work to fix the disruptive bits. But this is probably the #1 change we've been asked for in terms of abuse prevention features, by users and community admins alike.