> Were you paid to moderate those boards?

No, none of the moderators were paid, but I do think the ~2/3 admins were paid. But yeah, I did it purely out of the want for the forum to remain high-quality, as did most of the other moderators AFAIK.

> Recent social media (& maybe "recent" no longer applies) doesn't have this kind of community run tooling

Agree, although reddit with its "every subreddit is basically its own forum but not really" (admins still delete stuff you wouldn't + vice-versa) kind of did an extreme version of community run tooling, with the obvious end result that moderation is super unequal across reddit, and opaque.

Bluesky is worth mentioning as well, with their self-proclaimed "stackable" moderation, which is kind of some fresh air in the space. https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...