[Slansitartop]

> But I'm finding it more and more the case where mods feel the need to heavily regulate conversations/posting preemptively based on arbitrary personal worldview on what is 'good' content for the subreddit, instead of coming in to help when there's actual problems and situations where downvoting simply isn't enough.

That seems like a fair description of Metafilter as well, which is a poster child of "moderation that works" in some quarters. At some point the moderation drifted to shepherding the conversation in particular directions, though that may be to appease users who'd cause problems if it went any other way.