Aotearoa / New Zealand

I’m keen to hear what people didn’t like about them (and just as keen to know if you didn’t mind them)

As I said the subreddit is shaped by them so if you don't like the subreddit the blame lies only with the moderators. As far as I can see there were several problems. One was that they were arbitrary in their decisions. There were rules but they didn't matter. If they liked you then you could violate any rule, if they didn't like you they banned you. Another problem was that they used alts to participate in the subreddit and again if you got into an argument with one of them you had no idea you were arguing with a moderator and consequences could be severe. Finally some of the moderators were downright bad people. They harassed people, threatened people, online stalked people, doxxed people etc.

Moderator actions are published in the Modlog. Note that because servers are federated, the Modlog has lots of actions by mods on other servers.

That reduces the utility of the such a log. You should be able to filter them for any server or even any topic.

I guess this is possible through creating a topic about it (if mods remove it then you’d know from the Modlog)

I guess this is a workaround. I would prefer a proper system like they had at slashdot (don't know if they still have it, I haven't been there in ages).

The first part of holding people responsible is calling them out. Then yes, temporary or permanent bans are about the only escalation option available.

Maybe some creativity needs to be applied to see if there are other actions that can be done. Maybe tagging? Maybe some sort of tally of reports on the user? Maybe posting their karma next the name etc. This is a good opportunity to engage the community.