Why did you ban so many more conservatives than liberals instead of moderating without bias?
So, let's do this...
The "bias" that led to more conservatives being banned was built into the system, essentially around these rules:
1) No bigotry against protected classes
2) Claims should be buttressed with reasonable sources, upon request
3) No posting simply to disrupt discussion
In essence, the problem of moderating the ZZLP when it comes to political discussion is that Trumpism is a political movement built on (a) bigotry and (b) "alternative facts".
The rules, as written and as enforced, were much harder for conservatives to follow because it is largely conservatives who take political stands against entire groups of people due to innate characteristics. The modern Republican Party stands - on the whole - against the LGBTQ community, against immigration (unless from certain countries), and against women's rights on a grand scale. If Donald Trump were to have posted a standard campaign speech on the ZZLP, he would have broken a variety of IC-wide rules, and would have been banned barring a change or decision to have left the board. A major problem with conservatives on the ZZLP catching bans is that much of the modern Republican platform - as it exists - is little more than bigotry against minority groups simply for being minorities.
And note that not supporting those minority groups in their goals was not enough to get a ban. We allowed folks to make anti-immigrant or anti-LGBTQ posts without moderator interaction. The problem was that so many conservatives could not discuss LGBTQ issues, for example, without casting those in the LGBTQ community as perverts, or grooming children, or using slurs, or posting blatant falsehoods about LGBTQ people. And also note that rarely did one offense lead to a long-term ban, most bans were for a few days to let folks cool down and so we could have a discussion with the poster. The posters who got long-term bans were typically those who broke the rules multiple times and had gotten multiple bans for similar issues.
Citing arguments from reasonable sources was also an on-going issue, although one that faded in importannce of the last few years as a lot of folks either refused to post sources at all or their source was the Republican POTUS or nominee for POTUS. As the Republican Party has fallen wholesale into an adoption of "alternative facts" from right-wing sources, it became an issue to try to moderate when the sources folks were giving were either hate groups or were "fronts" for right-wing political groups tryiing to pose as information sources. If you're citing a white supremacist group as a supposedly legitimate source of information, then you probably shouldn't expect to get much latitude. And if you're citing a largely unknown "think tank" as a source when a 5-minute google search shows them to be nothing more than the mouthpiece of a white supremacist group, you probably shouldn't expect much more latitude. When there is an entire right-wing ecosystem dedicated to pumping out as much partisan BS under the guide of "news", it places those who use such BS sources in a problematic hole because they are citing bigoted sources and then are upset when they get in trouble for violating anti-bigotry rules.
Where a number of conservative posters got in trouble was when it became clear they weren't posting on the ZZLP to engage in actual discussion as much as to disrupt the already occurring discussion. Let me say that I'm sure it's tough coming to a board where the majority of posters disagree with you. But that doesn't excuse coming over and never actually addressng any of the posts that folks direct at you or ignoring any evidence presented to you in reply to you posts. So many conservative posters would come over to the ZZLP from the sports boards, post either an opinion or ask a question from their perspective, and then absolutely refuse to engage with the substance of any of the replies to them and their posts. They were willing to post their opinions for pages - often with slurs or insults towards entire groups of minorities - but would ignore any real attempt of the board to engage with their posts. Once it became obvious these posters weren't on the ZZLP to engage with other posters or arguments and were there to merely upset the apple cart, then the mods would engage them to either start taking the discussion seriously or to remain off of the ZZLP, as their style of posting is a form of trolling. Some would get pissed and go back to the sports boards, others would run right back to the ZZLP and start up again until they were banned. Of course, we know that for a small group of the most obnoxious sports board posters, having a ZZLP ban was seen as a badge of honor...which is defitionally an admission that they were there to troll and nothing more.
Those are the biggest reasons that far more conservatives were banned than liberals. In essense, the attributes that makes one a modern Republican pushes that person near the line of what IC was willing to tolerate around bigotry and posting factual information. The Republican Party became so extreme it essentially pushed a significant number of folks over the line that IC was willing to tolerate.
