> You're using weasely language to try to make it sound like noticing someone has said bigoted things, and kicking them from the community for it, is some kind of mistake, as if the bigotry was the fault of the moderator, rather than the bigot.

And you're trying to deflect from the problems by once again reducing a person's behaviour to simple labels that justify any actions to stop "bad people". Every mod has certainly banned people who are not bad actors, as but one example. Maybe the mod had a bad day, maybe the poster had a bad day.

> Place blame where it belongs: if someone says something sexist, someone noticing that they appear to be sexist is fully the responsibility of the person who said the sexist things.

The use of blame is not the problem, the problems are the standards used to assign blame, the processes by which correctness of blame assignment is judged, the consequences to the accused should blame be found justified, the path to redemption for the accused, and the transparency of the whole process to the accused and the community so that everyone can see that justice is being done and mod power is not being abused.

You know, the sort of thinking that took millennia to evolve into our modern legal systems. Show me a modern nation where exile is a legitimate outcome for a legal infraction. As flawed as modern justice is, at least we've evolved past the tribal thinking inherent to punishments like exile.

If this laundry list may seem impossible to satisfy given current sites, maybe it is. Maybe that also shouldn't be an excuse to not do it. I've written about this briefly before with some ideas why the problem exists, and how some of the issues might be mitigated [1,2].

> What would the bigoted poster have to do to convince you they're no longer a bigot? (at least as far as internet posting goes)

I'm sure that rephrasing is much more comforting to you. In reality, the situation is:

> What would a poster whose comment I and a few others have interpreted to be bigoted have to do to convince you they're not a bigot?

Regardless of the fact that no amount of circumstantial evidence would amount to proof, you've basically just doubled down on your assertion that people you consider bigots don't belong in your community, even if they're polite. That's exactly the problem.

> Depends on what they said, of course. If they said something racist, I would expect an earnest acknowledgement of that, that racism is bad, etc. As well as evidence from posting elsewhere on Reddit that they've reformed.

Few if any mods are going to do such detective work (due to time, patience, whatever), nor would many even entertain a conversation with a person that was banned for such reasons.

And as the set of mods changes over time, and the interpretation of policies changes over time, and with no transparency of community checking of mod power, they end up banning people for ever more specific infractions, with no real appeals process, thus creating the perfect echo chambers.

Every mod and mod system starts out with good intentions, but particularly with communities covering divisive issues, this is where naive moderation inevitably ends up. I don't think examples of unjust moderation are in short supply.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23263181

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23265160