Im basically lifting this from a comment i posted, because i want to raise visibility of the issue. I know there is a reddit typical response to be condescending and holier than thou about this topic, but it really does need looking at.

This is the issue. Roughly two weeks ago i went 26-4 tinker mid and stomped the game, I am GM tinker but bad at dota so sometimes this happens. I had an overwatch penalty immediately after the game - 4 hour cd and 1 LP game. There is no way it could have been reviewed before the game even ended, and it was the first game I played in a while as I was away. I think i was mass reported by the salty enemy team, and maybe my own, i don’t know. In the following days, my behaviour and comms score have plummeted from around 11k to 7k and 5k, respectively. The past 3 days i have come online, won my LP game, queued into ranked, lost the game, and immediately been 4 hour overwatch cooldowned again, prompting me to log off. I did not grief at all in these games and I have been muted the past 4 days so have not been using comms at all. Before this, over my 10 years playing dota, i have been low prio a few times here and there, my language is pretty bad when playing with my friends, but I had maintained a high behaviour score, with thousands of commends.

The player is already able to mute other players, if they wish. Why cant we just make it so you can only issue a single, general report for a player, separate from muting them. If a player gets enough reports in a game(say, 3), it queues the game for review. If the human reviewer agrees that the player is cheating or literally griefing (destroying items, feeding down mid, blocking camps, afking in the enemy mines for 30 mins as pos 4 until the game ends) then a strict penalty is issued (CD + LP). If no human review is performed after X time, a warning is shown to the player stating they were reported, but no further action is taken. If the reviewer finds them not guilty, no further action is taken against the reported party, and the reporting players are issued a notification saying the player was found not guilty and reminded to only issue reports for genuine reasons. No need for behaviour scores. Escalating overwatch penalties when guilty judgements or repeat misuse warnings are assessed, up to permanent bans, that go down a tier after a month or so of no penalties. This would remove the most toxic players from the normal pool quickly, give agency to the players to decide for themselves who to mute, and remove responsibility from valve from policing peoples chat in a competitive video game for adults.

Why cant we be allowed to be adults and take responsibility for ourselves? Why do we need valve to implement chat filters and automated penalties when we already have the option to mute? Why implement a system that can be abused at either end, that punishes players for losing the game? Why implement a system that sets the threshold for “High reports” as 4 in a game, then allow each player in the game to issue 6 to each player? Why even allow players to report the enemy team for voice abuse, let alone then actually count that report?

Its obviously broken and needs fixing. I have made some suggestions above that I feel would greatly reduce people abusing the system to spam reports. All it takes is one game to set you on the death spiral into chain queuing low priority. Do we really want this to be a game where nobody can talk to each other (or even tip!)? Where we all know baseless blaming and scapegoating is a big part of the toxicity problem but is not addressed in any way and actively encouraged?