Would public moderation logs promote witch-hunting? And is there a way that a community could overrule a moderator that wouldn't end up falling victim to a tyranny of the majority? It seems the current system only works if the mods truly have the spirit of the rules at heart; if not, they apply them inconsistently, approve their friends for moderation, and steer the spirit of the subreddit somewhere it should never go.

What I wonder is if a subreddit could be founded on a declaration of principles, and the community would get to vote (perhaps with long-form comments only) from time to time on whether some high profile deletions were in keeping with that spirit.

In many subreddits I moderate, I do remove such material.

The obvious question would be, how do you determine what is sexist, racist, bigoted, etc? If you go into /r/christianity or /r/islam, let's say, they will have a vastly different idea of what constitutes bigotry than /r/atheism.

Similarly, how many comment graveyards are there in places like /r/TwoXChromosomes where they perceived something to be sexist, yet elsewhere on Reddit those comments would be nothing more than an adult discussion about slightly controversial topics?

Speaking personally, moderation that makes sense to me is removing anything that is abusive, obvious trolling, or "I know it when I see it" levels of bigotry, etc. In other words, someone making low effort shitposts that are comprised almost entirely of slurs and doing so repeatedly would be something I'd say should be deleted, on the grounds that it is not contributing to a real discussion.

But, I'd say, someone who is positing an unpopular argument about even the most controversial topics shouldn't be. The thing I love (or loved) about Reddit is that any topic was up for discussion, and the ability to tolerate opinions you disagree with is really at the heart of free speech. Again, this doesn't mean abusiveness has to be tolerated, but ideas should be.

The reason I have copped a lot of flak is that we mods of /r/FreeSpeech remove explicitly racist, bigoted or sexist material, because the subreddit is for discussing Free Speech, not providing a place for people to promote views that would be unacceptable elsewhere.

I haven't visited that subreddit, so maybe that's why I don't understand why I've seen your name come up elsewhere. However, I've always said moderators should have the ability to set clear rules and delete posts that are in violation of them. (The difficulty arises when they apply these rules inconsistently, with political bias, or without adhering to the spirit of the rules.)