This is such a weird point of view. The mods don't "own" the space. It's not your server. You're the representatives of the community. It's very weird for the community to speak with an overwhelming voice that they want someone banned because they are toxic and unhinged (and also, breaking the objectively stated rules of the community, with things like how many articles posted per day), and for the mods to say, "No, we decided they stay." Them eventually deciding to ban, after the behavior got even more objectively unacceptable, doesn't excuse it.

It's like the difference between how Trump runs the government and how a normal president runs the government. Trump doesn't "own" the country. He has a responsibility for it. The ownership, but not the responsibility, is what makes someone bad in a leadership position. It's not to say you need to automatically accede to any loud contingent of the community that's yelling about something. But UM was about as clear-cut a case as it is possible to get, and I cannot for the life of me understand someone who's entrusted to keep a community of people a good place, who decides to come out and tell the members of that community "No, we've decided that this person needs to stay in the community, and we don't care what you think about it." I have no idea who these moderators are who are looking at UM's behavior and deciding "yeah that's not rule-breaking," let alone a consensus of them.

I think it is, in part, a product of the weirdly off-kilter incentives that exist on the modern volunteer internet. I sort of suspect that what's going on is that every human being kind of has an internal mental model of how much the rest of the community "owes" them, and that colors their behavior and how they adhere to the social contract. In places where someone feels like the community has "given them so much," that kind of thing, they'll really have respect and good dealing in almost everything. They'll fight hard to keep the community as a good place. They won't fall back on bullshit excuses like "well he's not breaking any rules (today)."

I do see the other side of it. I think almost any moderator on the modern internet gets put upon by so much thankless crap on a day-to-day basis (some of which you touched on elsewhere ein these comments) that your what-I-owe-the-users meter is absolutely pegged at "0" only because it can't go lower. I get that. I don't think it's really wrong for you to feel that way. I have a lot of sympathy for what mods do and it's a pretty critical part of keeping the community okay. I'm just saying that it would be hard for be in that position and take at all seriously what any one of "the users" thinks or wants, or even a group of them. That is wrong though. That is your position, to support the will of the community to build a good place to be. Not to lecture the community on what it should be, with whether that is good or bad as irrelevant or subordinate to "the rules."

I don't know, man. I don't really know what the answer is, and I don't really like the thankless and difficult position that mods on busy communities get put into. But this mindset is wrong.