He observes that you don't deescalate, and your response is "I know you'll never believe anything I say...".

You would think that an otherwise rational poster speculating about how to find a legal remedy to how posts are moderated on this site, and then a significant number of posters agreeing with him would be a wake-up call that something may need to be fixed. Instead it's "You don't have the facts".

The fact that this thread and many of it's replies remains seems to back this up as well. This thread violates at least 4 of the board rules (start a thread to call out a different poster, discussing deleted posts, using reaction buttons to mock a user, and personal attacks like "I can't imagine being like this. How embarrassing" and assorted LOLs and BWAHAHAHAs. I know this thread was reported by several users for those reasons and yet it still stands, further escalating.

I may not have all the facts on what happened between you and BYUMizzou, but I do know this: He felt like he wasn't dealt with fairly, even to the point where he wrote an over-the-top private post about suing you for it. Having read his FO posts for a long time, I think there was zero chance he would have followed through with it, but that shows how strongly he disagreed with what had happened. But the response did nothing to help that situation. I can't think of a situation where two posters tussling results in one poster getting a forced ignore is fair. (In general, I think forced ignores are a poor way to respond - I currently have a forced ignore on a poster that I don't really have any strong feelings about, but because you think I do, I'm forced to ignore him). Piling on with a 3 day penalty (especially over the content that he described in his post on the other site) isn't going to calm him down either, it escalates it. Then he writes that over-the-top FO post that you somehow are privy to. That should have tipped you off how out of control the situation was, but the response is to throw gasoline on the fire by issuing yet another penalty that he was almost certainly going to disagree with and feel that was unfair. At that point the situation is so out of control that the only way it ends is by kicking him off the board.

Some people above are comparing this to a restaurant owner kicking people out who were privately talking about suing the restaurant. That seems like a good comparison, but in this case they were talking about suing the restaurant because he kicks people out of the restaurant. You validated the reason he was angry and only succeeded in making him more angry. Is that what you want to do with the guy that you just discovered is thinking about ways to sue you?

There were multiple points during this episode there were chances to step back and let cooler heads prevail. Of course he has some responsibility too, but I can see how he got so angry. I know of many cases where people felt like they were dealt with unjustly here, only to be called a liar, or a racist, or a host of other names in appeal threads. In my case, I hardly ever get a response at all to my appeals.

There are several posts here questioning why people take an internet message board so seriously. That's true, but that should be very concerning to you. You have built a great community here over the years, but it's getting acidic, and the moderation is contributing to the acidity. The fact that people are talking about walking away should concern you as the owner of the site, but that's what will happen if this continues. After all, it's only an internet message board. At some point it won't be worth the hassle.