I frankly think the whole style of moderation of these forums is antiquated and usually poorly done. This isn’t because of any real defect with the moderating staff, but because the whole premise of how the forums are moderated aren’t good. It’s almost like it was schemed up in the 90s to emulate the role of a moderator in a formal debate. In reality few message boards or communication systems I’m familiar with moderate content this way, and I think for good reason. Most popular subreddits for example the moderators don’t “wade in” with warnings and admonishments, then escalate to suspensions and engage in rules lawyering debates about their decisions in a separate forum. A typical subreddit, offending posts are simply deleted without comment. Posters that post such posts frequently are banned. It isn’t any more complicated than that.
I think the way the mods here “wade” into the muck contributes a lot to the board’s maladministration and the general poor tone of a lot of threads. Since mod admonishment is done in public, a lot of people are jockeying to get other people in trouble with mods and gloat in the results in real time. More modern moderation that just doesn’t happen, there aren’t venues to cry about your offending posts being removed, and there are usually a narrow set of clear rules that can frequently be regulated by an automod. Subjective rules, moderators debating about their moderating decisions, public moderation, allowing offending posts to remain present etc I think all contribute to a form of discussion many people don’t like. Posting on these boards frequently feels like being in magistrate court, which most people don’t find fun.