I'm going to use three examples.
- Reddit, High Moderation the absolute worst: I've seen many people including myself get wrongfully banned from that website, It has the strongest moderation possible that feels a bit authoritarian. It tracks your device with an ID and your IP albeit for 100 days. I've seen people getting banned because they were protesting against "ICE" as "Violence" I've known people getting banned on r/suicidewatch because when someone reports you on Reddit sometimes there's a bot saying "Hey, we are here for you" which is again crazy ironic that they don't have a team handling these sort of issues, not that it's their job to do so but due to Reddit's aggression with Bots and Filters it feels like hell.
I posted a NSFW themed meme on an NSFW community and within seconds the post was removed due to Reddit's filters leading with a permanent ban, What are Reddit's filters and what classifies as a "filter" who knows. I sent an appeal saying that my alt got banned wrongly (same email) but I know that they won't bother to check. Leaving someone with no choice other to start clean again which is against their rules as a Ban Evasion however I still believe it was a wrong decision so I'm worthy of another chance.
You can argue after Reddit's controversies with r/the_donald and a subreddit where there were people literally dying on camera, Reddit enforced harsher rules which is understandable, but what they still don't understand is that in case there's a mistake you need to have better ways of communicating with an actual person, the appeal message is 250 Characters long and that's it. There are literal Nazis there who haven't been banned but I did just because of a meme.
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Lemmy, The Perfect Middle Ground: This website pretty much is in line with what I believe, that there should be moderation but without any stupid filters, karma requirements and power tripping mods, Is it because it's a much smaller community than reddit? Maybe. Will the rules ever change if Lemmy gets much more popular, Who knows?
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4Chan. The wild west: Almost to zero moderation, which to me is a bad thing because there will be people who will abuse that system and post illegal stuff and be borderline mental, I don't think I need to say more about that website.
To be fair there's still moderation, for example after the GamerGate drama posts on /v/ about specific people or e-celebrities is prohibited.
Many of your examples of "bad" moderation are more about site administration (including use of tech tools and appeals) than the degree of moderation. Like, yes - Reddit's moderation ecosystem, particularly in large subreddits, is fundamentally broken. Powermods, lack of accountability, malfunctioning digital filters, mods who lack of options for alternatives (or, where those alternatives exist, they are frequently overwhelmingly cesspools)... it's got issues. But this isn't about "more" or "less" moderation; it's about poorly-applied controls in the first place.
I'm not so sure Lemmy is so "perfect" either. I've seen plenty of moderation based on political views rather than actual misbehavior here, and conversely plenty of actual hatred and bigotry getting a pass because those in charge of a give space viewed it as aimed at the "correct" people. Likewise, while the Fediverse allegedly lets parallel communities develop, in reality it can be hard to overcome the inertia of people moving towards a popular community, unless the mods/staff there really screw up.
Okay, so what's the actual right amount in a given community?
My admittedly cop-out answer is "That depends on the community". There were some where extremely rigidly-enforced rules - particularly about quality or contents of answers or posts - helped to ensure communities retained a high degree of quality and reliability in what was posted. But others might want a more casual, relaxed space to goof around in - including in ways that others might not like - which require looser rules.
And that's really the rub: There's no absolute right answer. We can point to lots of wrong answers, but getting it right is a complex journey for each space. My personal focus is that whatever level is agreed on, it must be fairly applied for all users. You cannot be passing one user's slipup and coming down hard another. Be fair.
...and in the end, there will be people who simply cannot follow the rules, no matter how clearly they are explained.
I do agree and you are right that it depends on the community for example r/politics which is a really large subreddit that attracts all different kinds of users has to be way more strict than let's say a niche small community, but what I also didn't mention that receiving a permanent ban out of nowhere is harsh especially because a bot said so, to me a permanent ban should be enforced for the absolute worst of the worst situations, like harassment, doxxing and illegal porn.
But yeah my point is that if you are going to be that strict at least be fair and have actual admins checking your appeals and if they still say no, then all good.