From my last 5 stack overflow questions, 3 were some mod closing the question with a rationale that’s ridiculous.

Most questions are now answered in the comments instead of being written as an answer below the question and I assume this is because people have had bad experiences with gate keeper mods when writing answers.

I have reasonably high karma.

I don’t think quality deteriorated due to some attempts to make the site more friendly. It’s the spirit of a county rabbit breeders association that drives people away

Saying "mod on stack overflow" is much like saying "editor on Wikipedia".

Where these other community members who had the close vote privilege? Or an elected moderator that had a diamond in their name to designate that?

I (used to) answer questions in comments. It became too discouraging to post an answer that took 20 minutes to write and get immediately downvoted because someone disagrees with any single part of it (or they're trying to promote their own answer by suppressing everyone else's).

Comments can't be downvoted. MetaFilter had the right of it.