Yeah I totally understand what you mean by mods favoring the worst members in a community and not seeing anything wrong with what they do. I was unfortunate enough to experience that kind of behavior too, albeit in a different kind of community.
I used to frequent a niche online browser game where the moderators were made up of "the old guard", basically older players that had been around in the early days of the game. Which could be sensible and work with the right individuals and community but these kids unfortunately were not that.
They favored their fellow older players when it came to moderating, and yes that meant they'd overlook bad behavior by these members too and would take their side instead of that of the players being wronged by these members, seeing nothing wrong with their actions.
I'll give an example of something they often did that the moderators would overlook despite all the complaints about it.. At one point when I used to play the dev added mini bosses to the game which would drop unique items if you manage to defeat them, and what did the older players do when this feature was added? Did they properly engage with the feature by beating the mini bosses as they were intended to? No, they instead would wait around in the zones the minibosses spawn in and wait for another player to kill the miniboss and then while they were weakened and still recovering from the fight they'd strike and attack the player for the unique item they just got from the boss. On top of that since these are older players they know how to exploit the game's combat system which they fully use to their advantage, essentially "Stunlocking" their victims so they can't retaliate. Aaaaand the moderators didn't care about this behavior, despite the numerous complaints by the players being victimized by these people they'd take their side saying "Oh they're just playing the game their way", or "If you don't like it just switch to protected mode.", which is the game's non pvp mode, which also restricts you from certain aspects of the game in addition to not allowing you to attack other players and vice versa.
I ultimately stopped playing the game when the dev, who actively played and updated the game regularly, left and put one of the moderators in charge of the game.. basically making them super moderator and ofc the dev chose the worst moderator to take over, so ya wasn't sticking around for that.
Sorry for rambling, just figured I'd share that as a long example of an experience I had of moderators favoring the worst of a community.
Oh also I actually almost joined that forum you were on previously, but joined this one instead and your stories of how that other forum operates made me glad I picked this one.
