#What to do?
From my perspective, the moderators should do less. A lot less. The site is fine. It attracts a reasonable amount of quality questions and answers. The next time someone posts an off-topic question and a moderators sees it? Let it slip. Wait 8 hours. By then, the community might have already policed it. And if not, the moderators still can. The next time the moderators see a tag being treated in a way they don't like? Ask an open-ended question. And accept the fact that maybe "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is an acceptable answer.
If a moderator wants to lead, do so by being a role-model (you all write great answers, I'm sure that should not be hard), without taking moderator-style actions. Moderator actions are for exceptional circumstances.
(And on a personal note, maybe if you read my meta posts in the light of not asking for actions, but asking for an agreement on how to be a role-model, they might make a lot more sense. The first answer I always got was "we cannot do this within the rules". I wasn't asking for actions or enforceable rules, I was asking on a consensus on how to behave if you want to be a role-model. That's a big difference.)