As a consequence, moderation (the verb) has tons of second+ order effects, as all interventions ripple out into future posts and attitudes. Sometimes in an opposite way to what you intended with your intervention (e.g. so angry about being moderated that my next three comments are written in anger).
> The problem with provocation and flamebait is easy to derive from first principles: you can't provoke or flame others into curiosity. (dang)
As clear a description of "why" as I've seen. And the statistical argument is a good one, because moderators never control who shows up. [0]
If a comment has a 60% chance of attracting a flame in response, then that comment is dangerous to the forum as a whole, and a responsible commentor will write it to decrease that as much as possible.
Personally, I find myself paring down my comments to minimal kernels, when commenting on hot button topics, because any excess verbiage is a potential target for a flame to notice and attach to.
[0] My quintessential example of this was putting in hours of moderating a touchy topic on the EVE forums, IMHO doing a decent job getting every calmed down, with good feelings all around, only for some jackass to pop into the thread for the first time with a borderline (non-moderatable) comment that lit everything back on fire. "I am Jack's broken heart", indeed.