The question about who the volunteers are has been brought up before. Like SRS says, different people do different things. We had a "Help" forum that was misused and closed down. A lot of the misuse was about telling us about things it was plain to see anyway, and complaining about somebody saying something the poster didn't like and then complaining about the volunteer's decision not to do what was demanded.

It's not pleasant to have people complaining on Mudcat. It's less pleasant to have them wreck a forum created specifically for "Help", and there's no way in hell I think people ought to be able directly hassle moderators. Max's e-mail is public. So's Joe's, and if Joe doesn't want to deal with something directly, he can contact the moderators.