Kind of what I thought, had a Moderator of mine asking and this was his reasoning...
"The problem with "IGNORE" (IMHO) is that the people you are ignoring can still see your posts....talk crap about you....and generally screw up a thread that you've created and the only person who isn't seeing the insults and derogatory stuff is YOU. Everyone else on the forum can see that someone is trash-talking you... and in it can actually derail a thread completely if other people join in to defend / argue, etc.
It just seemed like instead of applying the "filter" against the person creating the content.... it might be better to filter who can "see" their content in the first place. In that way, the offending person isn't really even aware that content is being created and will not be tempted to troll in an attempt to get a reaction."