The official limit is no activity for 6 months, at that point the moderator status is supposed to be removed. This has been enforced rather inconsistently at times.
But does that mean that the moderator can just take one action every six months and retain their status?
You couldn't do that in a job!
You can absolutely do that in some very specific kinds of jobs, I've seen it first hand in public offices.
What kind of job? The person who prepares and files my taxes will retain their status as "my" CPA basically forever, but they only do my taxes once per year.
Interesting, thanks for the correction. … if I ever knew this I forgot it.