I'm going to try my best to not comment on actions taken against individuals in this case. But I would like to question the way the mods are interpreting The Rules, because I'm not sure I understand or agree with them.
The first rule of ENWorld is:
The Rules said:
Keep it civil: Don't engage in personal attacks, name-calling, or blanket generalizations in your discussions. Say how you feel or what you think, but be careful about ascribing motives to the actions of others or telling others how they "should" think. People seeking to engage and discuss will find themselves asking questions, seeking clarifications, and describing their own opinion. People seeking to "win an argument" sometimes end up taking cheap shots, calling people names, and generally trying to indimidate others. My advice: don't try to win.
I am seeing a problem with the examples given, and with how the rule is being enforced. Specifically, the rules only talk about being civil at the personal level, with the person you are actively in a discussion with. Civility is not something that only exists on the personal level.
A personal attack is uncivil, but so is a blanket attack, be it a gross generalization, religiously intolerant remark, or generally acting like a jerk. It seems to me that many extremely uncivilized comments in these problem threads were allowed simply because they were being uncivil in general, rather than being insults of a personal nature. There was frighteningly high number of blatantly sexist, homophobic, and racist remarks that went by without reprimand, seemingly because the mods didn't see a specific target to the comments (I can provide examples if requested).
Frankly, I don't agree with this interpretation of the phrase "keep it civil". If we really want to create a open, friendly community, we need to extend civility to groups, not just individuals. You may not like gays or blacks or women, but ENWorld is not the place to discuss it (even if you don't insult any specifc gays, blacks, or women).