You shouldn't feel guilty. Personally I hand out my mutes very easily for a few reasons: 1) I commonly use the "Show all Replies" button when reading a thread. A mute from me doesn't mean that I don't want to read your post, it usually means I probably don't want to read your post more than once. 2) Every two weeks or so I clear out my mute list, giving any hooligans that were going through a phase of silliness a chance to redeem themselves. I'm usually very willing to give people as many chances as necessary, it takes three seconds to put them back on the mute list if necessary so it's no skin off my back. Also as a side note... I recall you asked the other day how to get followers... the entire "Feel free to follow me" thing is probably going to do more damage than good, because it gives people the impression that anything you do you're doing so that you can get followers. Gaining followers isn't really something that happens overnight, just be patient, be yourself, and if people feel that you're worth following they will follow you. Prompting them to do so won't help :)