User blog comment:Bourgeoisie/Why current moderating practices aren't working/@comment-25282327-20150320213502/@comment-4845243-20150320221210

It's not actually a moderator's job to enforce the policy per se. The moderator's job is to enforce the purpose of the policy. The purpose of the policy is to prevent disruption and abuse. If enforcing the letter of the policy means you actually cause disruption (as I have seen many moderators do), then that is not what you should do. The best model really is common sense, taking action when action is necessary to prevent abuse/disruption. That's the model I've followed for a long time, and you seemed to like my model and wanted to imitate it last time we chatted on this topic. It's definitely more effective than the model I used before, which was trying to "punish" people for "violating" the policy.

We need to remember that the policy isn't an end. It's a mean to an end. If you are using it to go against the proper end, then you're completely distorting its whole purpose.