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Let me offer up a little anecdote. I thought that e.g. the idea of a moderator being able to cast a non-binding close vote was a good one, since it would let us not "unilaterally close" but still participate, and I went and duly championed it on meta.stackoverflow in this question.

The general response from the SO supermod community was very against this. Here's Jeff Atwood's answer:

I definitely hear how some of you have an expectation that we as mods shouldn't take action on e.g. closes until the community has exhausted itself. The problem is, this is NOT the guidance we get from the larger SO mod community. Their guidance is often very much "you're a diamond mod, do the right thing, screw the whiners." Here's another example thereof. I've taken a variety of community concerns from here to Meta.SE and generally get shot down with the reasoning "people need to have a thicker skin about life," ironically usually over my objections.

Let me offer up a little anecdote. I thought that e.g. the idea of a moderator being able to cast a non-binding close vote was a good one, since it would let us not "unilaterally close" but still participate, and I went and duly championed it on meta.stackoverflow in this question.

The general response from the SO supermod community was very against this. Here's Jeff Atwood's answer:

I definitely hear how some of you have an expectation that we as mods shouldn't take action on e.g. closes until the community has exhausted itself. The problem is, this is NOT the guidance we get from the larger SO mod community. Their guidance is often very much "you're a diamond mod, do the right thing, screw the whiners." Here's another example thereof. I've taken a variety of community concerns from here to Meta.SE and generally get shot down with the reasoning "people need to have a thicker skin about life," ironically usually over my objections.

So here's the deal - I think that this impression is caused by a mix of not really having visibility into what actually caused moderator intervention (frequently it's flag driven) and also a misunderstanding of what the limits of mod exception-handling should be.

So you might see how we are sometimes a little ambivalent about how to proceed. We get that some folks here who want us to "do less," take a step back, etc., but we get feedback from the "higher-ups" that is "abdication of responsibility." It's a hard balance to strike. I think that we end up being a lot more lenient and less harsh that the advice we're given recommends. But we do have a responsibility to the entire site to uphold. SSD has talked about how his perspective changed a lot once he couldn't just spout about his thoughts but was actually responsible for the site - it changes how you handle things, and it needs to. So yes, sometimes we have to do things that make some people unhappy. But that's part of the job.

The SE format itself is more restrictive than many on the Internet, and as a custom sub-culture we have many years of guidance on meta etc. Especially new users (though in the game-rec case, we learned that "new" can mean years) don't have all that context and tend to complain when they bump into the walls, and it's easy to say it's "the mods" (since that's the case on most other sites) when really it's the way the entire community works. We can comment and help people through that, but we have to realize that's also inevitable to some degree. Be careful about using "the mods" as shorthand for any way the site works - it's not not the case.

So here's the deal - I think that this impression is caused by a mix of not really having visibility into what actually caused a given instance of moderator intervention (frequently it's flag driven, but there's no way for you to see that) and also a misunderstanding of what the limits of mod exception-handling should be.

So you might see how we are sometimes a little ambivalent about how to proceed. We get that some folks here who want us to "do less," take a step back, etc., but we get feedback from the "higher-ups" that is "abdication of responsibility." It's a hard balance to strike. I think that we end up being a lot more lenient and less harsh that the advice we're given recommends. But we do have a responsibility to the entire site to uphold, and I guarantee no one here knows more about building online communities that Jeff Atwood. SSD has talked about how his perspective changed a lot once he couldn't just spout about his thoughts but was actually responsible for the site - it changes how you handle things, and it needs to. So yes, sometimes we have to do things that make some people unhappy. But that's part of the job.

The SE format itself is more restrictive than many on the Internet, and as a custom sub-culture we have many years of guidance on meta etc. Especially new users (though in the game-rec case, we learned that "new" can mean years) don't have all that context and tend to complain when they bump into the walls, and it's easy to say it's "the mods" (since that's the case on most other sites) when really it's the way the entire community works. We can comment and help people through that, but we have to realize that's also inevitable to some degree. Be careful about using "the mods" as shorthand for any way the site works - it's often not the case.

While we're open to discussion about how much intervention is required in certain things, none of the suggestions about "mods shouldn't close questions till X time has passed" or "mods should stay away from certain tags" or anything of that sort is going to happen. In the end we have a responsibility to the site, a responsibility that people up to Jeff Atwood clearly explain to us. We will continue to be the human exception handlers on the site in generally the same categories we do now (flag handling, closes, comment deletes, commenting to try to guide people, much-less-frequent everything else).

The primary issue we have at the moment is trust, and that is largely based on a combination of communication problems and really attitude-about-communication problems. Really it's more the latter than the former IMO (on everyone's part - when everything gets heated up I and the other mods also start reacting back by reading people's words badly because we feel under attack all the time). The solution to that can start today by everyone cooling off and discussing issues and assuming good faith on everyone's part. Repeating that over time is really the only solution to the only major problem we have.

While we're open to discussion about how much intervention is required in certain things, none of the suggestions about "mods shouldn't close questions till X time has passed" or "mods should stay away from certain tags" or anything of that sort is going to happen. In the end we have a responsibility to the site, a responsibility that people up to Jeff Atwood clearly explain to us. We will continue to be the human exception handlers on the site in generally the same categories we do now (flag handling, closes, comment deletes, commenting to try to guide people, much-less-frequent everything else). We have to balance our community's perceived unique needs with the overall SE structure and best practices (it's not either-or).

The primary issue we have at the moment is trust, and that is largely based on a combination of communication problems and really attitude-about-communication problems. Really it's more the latter than the former IMO (on everyone's part - when everything gets heated up I and the other mods also start reacting back by reading people's words badly because we feel under attack all the time). The solution to that can start today by everyone cooling off and discussing issues and assuming good faith on everyone's part. Repeating that over time is really the only solution to the only major problem we have. The more everyone here participates in moderating the site and upholding the site norms - clear questions, quality answers, few comments, be nice, etc - the more this site becomes "your" site and not "their" site.