[oliwarner]

I disagree.

Having skin in the game, wanting your community to blossom makes for much better moderators and community governance. They're far more likely to get involved in big tasks to fix long-standing issues. If rules need to change knowing the moderator calling for change helps a lot with acceptance.

My experience with paid moderators is they work in systems where they are vastly overworked so their willingness to actually engage with issues is low. Poor decisions get made. I've reported child porn and drug sales on Facebook and had a mod say they're okay. I have a few dozen examples like that. A lack of passion isn't good.