Twitter has both mute and block, they are separate functions. As well as 'report' which really should drive home the inherent differences in a centralized vs. decentralized system.

As far as disable_comments, I'd be in favor of removing that altogether (the easiest approach, and seems quite reasonable to me since no one uses it) or disallowing it unless rewards are disabled.

It's hard to have any control over basic ordering in your own discussions as a normal-staked user

Again, you seem stuck on the idea of unilateral control (over ordering here), vs. voting by the community, of which you as the author are still only a part, even if you did create the post at the top of the tree. My answer to that would be if you want unilateral control, don't do it on a blockchain with a global community-based rewarding scheme.

Of course, steemit.com is a centralized web site and can do whatever it wants. I hope this doesn't get implemented in the form described on the centralized web site which happens to be the most used window to the Steem blockchain though.