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I've always heard that attributed to Confucious.

After he sobered up, Confucious realized he'd rather be anonymous on that one.

Maybe it was.

It wouldn't surprise me.

That little bearded numpty just sat on his a*** all day talking shite.

Give me a widescreen tv, sports channel and a box of beers and I can do the same thing.

Your arguing for the right for moderators to be able leave flaming or argumentative comments as they just love to stir when they feel they are immune to critisism or action against them, you are in fact in favour by your very comments of mod input as it is on here whatever the outcome is because it excites you to delete and ban people that dont actually agree with your own personal opinions.
The only way a mod could possibly have input is for strict guidelines NOT to leave derogatory comments of ANY nature because thats the only way it will work that would not incite favouratism and trouble in general.

"I'd say that was a complete load of crap, but then, that would just make your point, wouldn't it."

is indeed a typical example of an ugly comment and inciting ugly comments by other users because you are actually putting down a person by your own words and in doing so encourage others to follow suit.
What you maybe should have said is " i dont think i can agree with you beause....."
There are many ways to moderate forums as you might be aware of but what you seem to fail to see in my opinion is the fact that intervening comments should always be well thought out before leaving them due to the nature of implications it could cause if it is indeed a derogatory or flaming comment.
A good community runs itself from good moderating and has plenty of input simply because its a known good community to be involved in, this community has however got quite a few negative comments regarding the moderation techniques used so maybe you should do some research on the very community you work on as it is a lot more than "3 or 4" as you suggest that are complaining.
Let the threads run without inciting ugly comments is my opinion and do your job knowing you have not had any input whatsoever in an argument that may appear on any particular thread by leaving any comments other than the reason you may delete or ban.
Proof is in the pudding as we say and i think after your comments it will start to get ugly on this thread.

@Tex...

if this thread carries on the way it is...you might have to choose between merging it with dave999's epic thread or the 'complaints and general unhappy mutterers' thread....

Again, who was banned because we didn't agree with his comments, critique or point of view?

Give me one single example of a person who was silenced in such a way? Deletion of comments is seriously frowned upon (I burned myself a couple of times as a moderator because of this, ain't that true Geneven?), and banning users is only reserved to very specific individuals (very heavy trolling, disrupting the course of other people's threads, and repeated insults). Then again, banning has only been used when such behaviour was repeated, no matter what kind of mediation, no matter how many times the user had been warned.

You will find no such example in these forums. You may not agree with the fact that our moderators speak freely, but one should not forget they are community members before they are moderators. Moderators exist because community members decide they want to help. This does not change their status, and I would feel cheated if suddenly, because one takes on the role of a moderator, he has to change his point of view, or the ways of his language.

Moderators have very limited power. All of our actions are logged, and most of the actions, discussions about users and such are reported to our fellow moderators and higher up to administrators as well. When a message is deleted, it is never "fully" deleted. It is just hidden from view for normal members. Other moderators can still read the comments, and they are shown the comment has been "soft deleted" by another moderator, and can see the reason provided by the moderator.

I suggest you try to understand how moderation works in our forums before you criticise it. There is a lot you don't realise, so please, thread with caution.

You're actually 100% wrong on that.

No moderator here has ever deleted posts or banned members over disagreement. Ever. So no moderator here "gets excited" over something they don't or would not do. In fact there are no moderators here with such a flawed personality. If any person was so inclined to be so malicious and petty, they would never be accepted as a moderator here.

If I suggested you read more carefully and avoid silly straw man construction, would you be willing to try?

abill_uk has already admitted he willfully tries to derail threads and passively-aggressively push for the moderator responses he complains about so he can prove his accusations of heavy-handedness. The very definition of trolling.

That of course puts us in an interesting position, and for the most part we roll our eyes and ignore his blatant baiting, but at some point enough will of course become enough.

Ironically, though, the example of abill_uk handily demonstrates that anyone claiming we are too heavy-handed here is smoking something really strong.

@ Crash
I wont do a "reply" as it takes up space and time, i was actually banned for what exactly and what warning did i in fact get? did you read how the thread went on this occasion? did you not see the follow on from a mods input ? i complained a few times and was ignored as per usual and please remember i was the op in this case and because of the foul comments i never stood a chance because in came the usual group that follow the mods on here and destroyed everything, i had no control whatsoever.
You should be well aware of the problems dealing with peoples insults and as we are only human can only take so much then you start to rebel, in this case i lost the ability from pure disbelief of being a professional reading just what was being said.
It could have been stopped by any mod but no moderation at all was used and if you go look at that particular thread you will indeed see my point that a mod's interaction only flamed the issue well and truly out of hand and on it went.
I DO sympathise with you because quite frankly this is and can be a very nasty world and is not easy to deal with some of the nastiness that goes on.
I personally think you should get back to moderating because you seem to have a fair view and have learned valuble lessons from your own actions so from my point of view the community perhaps lost a good mod !.
I read everything and do agree with what your saying but i still feel that any mod should really think before leaving a comment and i will stick by that rule because it is the sensible thing to do when dealing with masses of differnt cultures and people in general, tread with caution i say.