After seeing several threads get deleted recently due to some form of phobia or ism or another, I've been thinking a lot about whether there's a better way to deal with it.
There are a lot of really good people on MN who call out racism and homophobia and transphobia, biphobia etc when they see it, and threads started with these issues in the forefront often don't go well for the OP, who gets accused of being a bigot, and the thread is eventually reported and taken down.
The issue i have with this is that it basically erases the problem, and the discussion that follows. Instead of people being able to engage in the discussion and hear other points of view, the whole platform for any kind of learning is just shut down. It may be the simplest way to deal with bigotry but it's not very helpful in terms of progress.
Why not just ban the bigots and keep the discussions?