There's another aspect which I'd like to share ... if you were a passionate proponent of a CT (or an ATM idea), weren't getting anywhere, and a mod stepped in, would you be tempted to scream 'bad moderating!', 'bad moderator!!' as a tactic (never mind how well-founded or how ridiculous your complaint was)?

If you noticed that what happened when you did this was that the mod in question recused herself*, and another mod took over, would you conclude that this tactic was quite powerful? And that you should try using it more often?

While dealing with spam is certainly time-consuming (ToSeek's estimate of the number of spams a day that a mod deals with is, if anything, too low), it's not stressful. At one time I tried moderating the CT section, but found myself tempted to do too many drastic things. Towards the end, I would only venture in there if there were a Reported Post that no other mod seemed to have acted on.

For myself, I'm here for the astronomy ...

*There are, IMHO, many good reasons why such a mod should, irrespective of whether there are specific rules on it or not, and irrespective of the merits (or otherwise) of the complaint.