Originally Posted by
blabbate
It was torn down because it was tainted by pervasive misogyny and abusive language. This wasn't just one thread, but many across multiple forums and a long period of time.
Tearing it all down and building something new is more effective than banning and deleting posts/threads for several reasons. First, and most obviously, it guarantees that every extant offensive thread is locked. Second, it levels the playing field. Nobody has seniority, which makes new users more comfortable speaking up and should reduce the possibility of poor behavior being perceived as more acceptable when committed by more active users. Third, bans are (and always have been) an ineffective way to change the entrenched culture of an online community. They simply aren't strong enough. Instead, you need to change the normative behavior, preferably through voluntary compliance. But that requires a clear set of rules consistently enforced and not marginalized by poor enforcement in the past. Going with a clean slate instead of a bunch of bans and deletes is also intended to give an impression of opportunity instead of punishment. It's inevitable that some people will feel punished due to loss of status, but hopefully it'll pay off in new users and more productive discussion.
You may disagree with the owners about whether the problem was as bad as they thought, but if they were correct about the severity a clean slate is perfectly appropriate.