Meh, the mods here are alright. I don't think there's much actual "abuse" (for what profit?) going on, but there's a lack of consistency and transparency. I think this is more an issue with management incompetence, poor policy implementation, and (from what I can tell) not much coordination between the mod team, rather than poor judgement from any individual mod. Regarding your point about the Adblock thread, I think it highlights management incompetence; someone in charge deserves to be slapped in the face for allowing a site contributor to encourage open discussion of Adblock while not providing proper warning that the normal rules would still be enforced.
It's natural that the frustration for the ensuing shitstorm would be taken out on the mods; like police officers, mods are the main point of contact between the citizenry and the authority. When cops are ordered to break up a protest, no one says "oh, but they're just following a set of directives from a higher-up authority figure;" they simply take their frustration out on the people they're in direct contact with.
Furthermore, if you get a warning (or suspension/ban/etc.), you can't speak directly to the mod who handed it out, which results in even less transparency than the IRL police example. The "appeals" process is a total joke; a (likely low-paid) customer support rep in some office just gives generic replies until you can't be bothered to keep sending emails. So again, the frustration isn't surprising.
It's unfortunate that the mods bear the brunt of the community's frustration, but I think there IS plenty of room for improvement in terms of the moderation on this site. Not so much in terms the efforts of the individual moderators themselves, but rather in terms of the rules and tools they have to work with.
It's natural that the frustration for the ensuing shitstorm would be taken out on the mods; like police officers, mods are the main point of contact between the citizenry and the authority. When cops are ordered to break up a protest, no one says "oh, but they're just following a set of directives from a higher-up authority figure;" they simply take their frustration out on the people they're in direct contact with.
Furthermore, if you get a warning (or suspension/ban/etc.), you can't speak directly to the mod who handed it out, which results in even less transparency than the IRL police example. The "appeals" process is a total joke; a (likely low-paid) customer support rep in some office just gives generic replies until you can't be bothered to keep sending emails. So again, the frustration isn't surprising.
It's unfortunate that the mods bear the brunt of the community's frustration, but I think there IS plenty of room for improvement in terms of the moderation on this site. Not so much in terms the efforts of the individual moderators themselves, but rather in terms of the rules and tools they have to work with.