After five years, I chose to end moderating a Mastodon instance. The 
culmination, defined as a final climactic stage here, is the tenth report 
against a user who averages 89 status reports a day, who repeatedly and 
unapologetically runs afoul of a server rule. I am only one member of a 
moderation team. Moderation functions applied were: posts deleting, limiting,
 warning, freezing account. One moderator was removed/demoted for freezing 
the account. Two moderators limited the account, the admin unlimited the 
account. We were not told why. 

Now, as of this typing, of the four most active moderators in the previous 
month, one moderator is on a mental health/values recalibration hiatus; one 
moderator is busy with work, travel, and family; one has been demoted; and 
one is not performing as the application of the server rules appears to 
bother the admin. The problem account, upon being frozen, called the 
moderation team pro-Zionist genocidal types. 

Do you suppose the inactivity of the four (three) moderators is entirely 
coincidental?

The admin posts "let's make the fediverse what we want it to be" and that 
includes supporting accounts exhibiting unhinged, manic behaviour of abusive 
language against federated accounts and against the moderation team and admin.

Either the admin is wrong, or the moderation team acted inappropriately.

Both sets are voluntary, the admin hosts and maintains the server at cost, 
and determines the server rules. The admin chooses to elevate and demote
accounts to and from the moderator level.

Therefore the moderation team acted inappropriately. The moderation team 
does not know how to act appropriately, treating the problem user the way 
the team has treated other problem users led to demotion and undoing of a 
limit, because the moderation team believed harassing, derogatory, and 
hateful language was not part of the fediverse experience the admin wanted.

Twice my limit of an account has been undone without comment or guidance
for preferred moderation action in future. The first time I acted on a
report of a local user calling a federated user a "faggot", which I deemed
a slur against homosexuals. To me, "faggot" is hateful and derogatory. The
reported user could have direct-mentioned "faggot" and I wouldn't know of
it, and possibly neither would the reporter, in which case it would not be
reported.

In the five years I moderated an instance, I did not detect any pro-genocide
or pro-Zionist sentiment among the moderators or the admin, yet twice users
used the Appeal function to call moderators and the admin those things. I
know that a pro-genocide Zionist on the instance was suspended by a 
moderator before the second charge of 'pro-genocide Zionists' came in an 
appeal, from a user suspended for calling another user a 'Nazi in a kippah.'

Don't laugh, but when I started moderating the server rule was "Be excellent
to each other," and I interpreted the absence of ad hominem attacks like 
"Nazi," "faggot", and "pro-genocidal Zionist" where no evidence supported
those insults as what I would like the fediverse to be.

Also don't laugh at this, but I want less to do with the fediverse.

The reporter is not always correct. The moderator is not always correct.
The admin is always correct.