Then what value are the moderators adding if what they do can be automated by a regex filter?

Do you think that all online moderation can be accomplished with a regex filter with no human review?

Even if it magically could, someone needs to maintain the regex.

Did you miss the "pending moderator approval" part of that?

This is what I'd like to know. Based on mod comments in r/Toronto I suspect their regex is literally "ends with ?" and they have to manually approve every question.

They invented work for themselves that doesn't even need to exist and can be solved with the voting system. Every rule change they've made seems to be in an effort to make themselves relevant and take on unnecessary work. This seems like a common theme with Reddit moderators - they give themselves more work to do that nobody is asking them to do in order to justify their existence.

They seem to like to do it for free.