One of the many inaccurate premises here is that "moderators" are just that. They wear several hats and therefore can create as many problems as they claim to diffuse. And unfortunately they do so. They are mostly well known and often publically humiliate other posters both now and in the past. True forum "Moderators" don't participate at an emotional or personal level with other posters in an ongoing manner, they simply delete. They don't argue among themselves. They don't blame other posters for problems in the public arena. They don't debate. They don't uncover anon posters if they feel like it. The ability to do all these things freely, creates many more problems in our communication than they solve, unfortunately.   

I believe the individuals with censorship rights should stop all public discourse with other forum members if they truly want to call themselves moderators. I believe this would solve most of our problems. Our problems are primarily structural. Personality problems can be fixed when the structure of an organization is fixed. I have said this many times in the past. It is time for some more structural fixes. Moderators should not post publically at all. That would be a possible reasonable beginning. In order for the current moderators to be able to continue to participate, they would have to give these operations to others who would agree to stop posting publically.

No need for debate on the rightness or wrongness of this suggestion. Only a test of the hypothesis would yield results.