Banning an IP is a joke, it isn’t unique as the ISP (unless you pay for a fixed IP) assigns a dynamic IP address to the individual user when they connect. So the other option would be to ban a group/range of IPs and that would block a complete ISP’s IP range and that certainly isn’t fair.
What I can’t believe is that considering the off-topic forum was initiated for topics unrelated to avast and as far as that goes there are no end of forums/chat rooms, etc. than you can shake a stick at to cater anything not avast related. Not to mention the non-official, loose acceptance that the General forum has received a lot of leeway from the moderators.
So there are already plenty outlets for people to discuss non avast related issues than to even contemplate this and has been said Alwil have effectively refused to re-open it and they are the ones paying the piper so they call the tune and no amount of talking is going to change that.