I remember when you, (Martin) started these forums after the unofficial but de facto official forums died. Then a few months later they started their official forums, and I think it was the fact that it was official that brought people to it, but it's now so long ago, I don't remember well. Anyway, when you started daemonforums, it was the place to be.
The mods do stuff besides some formatting, that like you, I often find arbitrary and annoying, and yeah, there is some passive aggressive moderating there, but in fairness, I don't see much of that anymore.