But how do you know the people you want to accuse and report do? How do you know they are antagonizing for fun?

I get how someone who is a mod in a LGBT community is going to run into more of them, but for other mods, those trolls trolling people for fun are just going to be people that raise arguments they don’t like. Such a feature could easily devolve into wrongthink thoughtpolicing into a We Happy Few dystopia under the wrong direction. Don’t be a downer, take your joy make comments that just generally agree with the gist of what we all agree with! You don’t? Time to get slapped by the ban hammer!

Have you tried confronting these users openly? Like saying something like “We have to deal with people who participate in bad faith and create arguments to antagonize people, and because of reason X, Y, and Z I believe you may be one of them. Please be more respectful and/or informed in your comments, or we may have to take action. If we are mistaken, we apologize but we have limited time, resources, and awareness to moderate this community, so we may have to act even when we are ultimately mistaken so we do ask some cooperation on your behalf.” If they are trolling for fun and antagonizing, they are going to continue to argue, but you don’t have to afterwards since you’ve already explained yourself by their next reply. “I don’t have the time to argue any more, help us make more time by not being so conflictive to the community we are trying to moderate.”

If it’s not fun then why are you arguing? You have the option to disengage. Every space doesn’t have to be for you. If it’s not something reportable, just let people have their fun, even that guy with the thorns in his comments.