As a follow-up to my previously already locked post on the subject of censorship, given that I never criticize without also offering an alternative that I consider significantly better, and being fully aware that this constitutes unsolicited advice because the site decided to act defensively instead of asking me for suggestions, I still decided to make a positive contribution by presenting moderation suggestions based on my own experience dealing with the worst of the Internet as a founder and moderator of a medium-sized programming channel on IRC eons ago.
One of the subjects that I touched on the locked thread was the lack of transparency in decision making, which as I explained enables moderation abuse by preventing accountability even if unintentionally, and the other subject that I touched was the antagonization and polarization of the community resulting from a moderation approach focused entirely on punishing undesired behavior instead of rewarding desired behavior. It is my understanding that few might have understood what I meant, which in my opinion is perfectly natural because my empirical observation tells me that very few people dare thinking outside the box, but in my opinion and experience there is definitely at least one way to tackle moderation positively, and the purpose of this post is explain what it is, let the community debate its merits, and also present their own complementary or alternative ideas that the site's administration can draw inspiration from if they truly intend to address any of the problems that I raised on the other thread.
Moderation isn't an easy job, and not everyone is psychologically fit for it, as it requires the ability to empathize with others which most people seem totally incapable of doing. A competent moderator capable of acting as a conflict mediator by chiming in and stating their unbiased opinion from an outsider's perspective, while at the same time demonstrating the ability to judge the situation from the perspective of every party involved, can do wonders to find a common ground of agreement and compromise that anyone acting in good faith can accept, reserving their punishment abilities only to the cases in which bad faith is clearly demonstrated. This requires being open to ask questions to all the parties involved, and making sure that those parties recognize the empathy before moving to public judgment. This encourages good behavior by rewarding good faith with understanding, prevents against divisive sentiments like us against them by clearing barriers of opacity between the community and its administrators, and makes moderators less likely to be targeted by projecting themselves in a position of servitude instead of authority.
This is already a compromise, because I am personally of the opinion that moderation should simply not exist, and that every user should instead have the ability to influence the curation of the content that they see on the site, with useful contributions being cited and promoted along with content produced by the site itself, but that would require a lot of change so I think that the empathizing moderation approach that I already suggested is the most realistic option at this point.