The fact that you need more than one individual comment thread to figure out what is going on (also a highly proposition by itself) implies moderator involvement is more important than ever, as a reasonable, non-hot-headed outside figure that can make a holistic assessment of what is going on and what rules of the site have been broken.
Not sure if this is a big crux, just stoping by to note a disagreement here: I think often the reason that Alice doesn’t want to talk to Bob can be because Bob was very unpleasant toward Alice in off-site contexts. This is not something that the mods are able to see, but is a valid reason for Alice to find Bob’s (otherwise reasonable seeming) comments very unpleasant.
Not sure if this is a big crux, just stoping by to note a disagreement here: I think often the reason that Alice doesn’t want to talk to Bob can be because Bob was very unpleasant toward Alice in off-site contexts. This is not something that the mods are able to see, but is a valid reason for Alice to find Bob’s (otherwise reasonable seeming) comments very unpleasant.