Then again so are all its subreddits, and the volunteer mods are about as opaque and strange as the admins, with the added excuse that they're doing it for free.
The fact that the ecosystem has survived seems more like happenstance.
Volunteer moderation is one of those things that must baffle economists. Here you have people putting in a lot of work for free for a profit seeking enterprise.
They do the same thing for the same reasons when it comes to peer review...
I'd wager it's either a perceived, or in some instances, actual, power that motivates a few few of these folks. I don't doubt there are do-gooders out there who want to see their artisan needlepoint subreddit do well, so they volunteer their time to the community... but I also believe that once a community reaches a certain size, the folks motivated by power start to seep in.
More often than not, the man who seeks power is ill-suited to have it.
Not that I think there's a way to force that, but the disconnect is still there.
Agreed about the folks who want power. When I moderated a large forum and we picked new moderators we had a rule where anyone who lobbied 'too hard' to be a moderator was automatically out. What is funny is that if you followed those users they often ended up banned later on ...
Don't they have to mingle with whoever decides who's going to be promoted to admin or moderator? For indirect votes via party lists, I think it's quite similar, isn't it? You don't have to convince the public, you just have to convince the tiny amount of people that decides who's placed on the list.
Granted its a trust thing, I get it, but it's also a disconnect.