[insteadof]

In four years you should have learnt that it's "Stack Overflow" with a space and that you can only get moderator status when you have a diamond next to your name.

Then again, there are plenty of 3-year+ users with 100k+ who still think moderators are any other users who disagree with them and/or can only vote to close a question.

When you don't want to see the effects of leaving joke questions around as more and more users use that as a reason to increase the noise, then you don't want to see why moderation and locking/deleting needs to take place.

[cruise02]

There are a set of tools that you gain access to when you hit 10k reputation, which are often referred to as the "10k moderator tools." I think this is what the author is talking about when he says he was close to moderator status.

[insteadof]

Reading the other comments here, a lot of people think mods are those with 2k. Or at least those with edit privileges.