I think they main incentive that drives people to initially become moderators is the desire to keep the community they operate in clean and rule abiding.

In well-policed communities where moderators actively listen to users, or where people feel reporting and flagging mechanisms work, I would imagine people generally feel empowered enough that they are satisfied remaining a regular user.

I don't think many moderators seek to expand their rulesets, as it really just becomes additional (often free) work for them. Increasing and enforcing more rules is a cost that is only worth bearing when what isn't being actioned is causing enough damage to warrant the additional work.

I've too often seen moderators decide that their job is to prevent controversies; often leading to them forbidding any poster from contradicting any other poster; creating a "first misinformation wins" forum. This is less work for them, way less cognitive work but it creates ridiculous and unfortunate results.

Do you mind giving a few examples? I can't think of any communities like that.

These were disease-centered facebook groups mostly, but also writers groups, etc. The common idea was "If you disagree, just move along. Don't comment."

> In placaes like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow and various forums the community divides into three groups:

> 1. Content creators: those who past and answer questions, etc;

> 2. Moderators: those who write and enforce rules and standards; and

Not that simple, especially on Wikipedia. Often but not always, the initial reputation of "moderators" is gained by being a "prolific contributor". Even after becoming a moderator, it's still common for one to continue contributing high-quality content. This system is commonly described as a "meritocracy" but not without vocal critics (on whether it's a true "meritocracy", and on whether "meritocracy" is a good system).

This creates a lot of complications. From my experience, many of the most toxic Wikipedia political struggles arise as a result of the conflicts between:

1. One's opinion about the subject in the article.

2. One's opinion about the quality of the article itself.

3. One's opinion about the editorial policy that is supposed to be applied to the article.

4. One's opinion about another editor as a person.

5. One's opinion about another editor's opinion on (2), (3), and (4).

I think the same thing happens in free and open source software projects as well.

I genuinely wonder what would be the outcome in an alternative system of which moderators are purely neutral observers and do not particulate or contribute content themselves, and what are the advantages and disadvantages in both systems.

I expect that the benefit is: reduced personal attachment on particular issues, and that would be helpful on reducing unnecessary conflicts. However, no personal attachment also means there's no personal motivation on actually solving the problems.