I'll reiterate my question:
Can you get a person banned because you take offense at a comment, or only if the administrators agree that the comment is offensive? And given the volume of comments, would they do it in personally or pass it off to a program?
Now, I don't think I've ever been sexist in any game, nor racist except in the context of the game (for example, in Pendragon, my character hated Saxons [based on a random roll in character creation], so I was overbearing and obnoxious to Saxon characters in the game - not, however, the player). So I'm clean in that respect.
But what if someone misinterprets a comment as being either sexist or racist? Or uses a word that *could* be considered sexist or racist but in a context which isn't? Who decides whether what was said is a bannable offense or not? Zero-tolerance implies that something happens the moment it comes to the attention of the admins. Do they go through the logs and decide to ban or not? If so, I have no serious problems with it. I would just prefer that things be dealt with on a case-by-case basis for comments that are not obviously sexist or racist, a warning about behavior if they're in the grey area, then the banhammer. And if the banhammer is used, consider using it on the IP address, not just the account.
Or do they use some kind of automatic 'banned word filter' the way Yahoo did on their message boards, which would automatically recognize any word that could be offensive? (and that was a piece of junk, let me tell you. You couldn't use the word Japan because it had Jap in it. You couldn't scrape something off your shoe. And don't try to shorten "who are".)
I think these are all valid concerns.