@Rook Yep, we're on the same page about that.
Asshole characters can be a joy; asshole players are not.
Basically, on previous incarnations of the board, the problem of "I had a bad day RL, I want to make someone as miserable as I am by being a real jerk IC, and making sure nobody can do anything about it OOC because it's a non-consent game and they don't get a say and I get to make the other player uncomfortable/unhappy and I'm going to enjoy that/gleefully not give a damn about that other human being on the other end of this situation," came up more than a few times as a flaw in fully non-consent environments.
While these folks are rare, they're out there. Even some otherwise normal folks can dip a toe into this behavior once in a while, and that's really all it takes -- once in a while -- to screw up someone else's gaming experience in a much more long-term fashion. I've found -- and further found I wasn't alone in thinking -- PK itself wasn't really as scary as this OOC behavioral pattern, since it's entirely possible to lose a character in ways that tell a good story or are otherwise enjoyable for all players involved. Further, shunning doesn't always work well in these cases as these folks can use non-consent to find means of forcing inclusion, also.
Generally speaking, while nobody really likes this behavior, it's been considered an acceptable trade-off for the benefit of impartial conflict resolution (non-consent dice and stats with no opt-out regardless of the reasoning for a situation or gravity of it) between players, primarily due to concerns about people abusing consent policies to sidestep consequences or behave like morons in an entirely different manner.
Basically, I think it's time we stop being so afraid of people 'abusing consent' that we put up with 'being an asshole OOC because I can be'.
Staff can't really do anything to the 'asshole because I can be' because you essentially have to make special rules to punish them, as what they're doing may be counter to a positive game environment, but that's really vague at best and hard to rule on consistently, transparently, and with an appearance of fairness, since it is explicitly not against the rules, but is instead a potential violation of the social contract. Conversely, it isn't too hard to write up rules about when it is or is not reasonable to deny consent, what consent applies to and what it doesn't, and what constitutes abuses of consent in ways that make the other problem one that can be managed with far more consistency, perceived and observed fairness, and transparency.