I'm a former super moderator for several forums. I stopped moderating because these were often activity or vehicle-based, and my interests changed over the years. For the last forum where I was a super mod, I handed over the reins to moderators I vetted personally. Usually, my role involved behind-the-scenes maintenance; post organization, fixing sloppy thread titles (for better searches), guiding new users where to post if they were in the wrong section, merging threads, etc. Rarely did I have to directly moderate anyone and bans were even rarer.
My contribution is this; heavy-handed moderation will always ruin forums and run off good contributing members. Being unpaid is no excuse for over-moderating or micro-managing a forum to the deficit of the forum and its users. Also, bad moderation begets bad users, and this can deeply infect forums with the scourge of political infighting, biases, special privilege, free speech for some, etc. Like any company, bad company culture comes from the top.
Are we not all adults here? My policy as a former super mod has always been to allow adults to work it out, and they generally will find a way. Only in rare cases would I consider user-moderation to be necessary, but usually that's also when a user is close to a ban (making physical threats and other clearly disruptive behavior). I would never censor content unless it's obviously an egregious abuse (porn, spam, etc.). As a free-speech absolutist in real life (but for speech which directly causes harm such as yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater)—I understand that the speech we protect in places where free speech exists is not 'nice' speech, but the speech which requires protection from a reason—because people may not like it. There is little pressing need to 'protect' inoffensive or uncontroversial speech.
Adults will invariably disagree, argue, dislike another's tone, etc., but shutting down a thread is never a way to fix this. All it does is drive the conflict underground with no resolution, where the involved parties will continue to snipe at each other. Adults in real life argue, and we don't see third parties coming in to mute them. People just disagree sometimes and usually these things work themselves out. I've worked out issues with people who have opposite viewpoints, either by changing my mind, getting them to change their mind, both, or agreeing to disagree and emphasizing the areas where we have parity.
It's natural when humans are in a group to have this dust-up with new people meeting each other in the sizing up-phase—but humans generally dislike sustained conflict and will usually find ways to co-exist once all that posturing is out of the way. This is very natural for humans, and it's no different on forums. We should also note that humans perceive and resolve conflicts differently, and this includes variability between the sexes. Usually all of this is resolved with enough time, whilst recognizing that neurodiversity is the norm and not the exception.
On balance, light or minimal moderation is the best option when dealing with adults expressing thoughts, even if there are occasional disagreements. We are humans at the end of the day and forums are a self-selected group of people with common interests. I'm optimistic that we'll generally try to resolve conflicts wherever possible, but it's a process that has to be given freedom for that resolution to occur.
My .02.
