I would amend the new question to:

"If moderators were limited to moderating offensive posts only -- and not moving threads which otherwise are functioning fine on whatever board they find themselves -- how would people define "offensive", and what would be acceptable and unacceptable?

For example, not to pick on Dorian per se, but only because his post is right “here”, it would be easy to construe his previous post as a personal attack and offensive, at least by drbala...my sense is that it was a sarcastic, tongue and cheek response to the banter which has preceded it, but I don't know Dorian and email/posts can easily be misunderstood, because you don’t hear the tone.

Seeing that content which some people find offensive, others will find acceptable, how do we reach common ground here?

For example, maybe an acceptable moderator response to Dorian could be: “Dorian, please be aware that your post could be interpreted as a personal attack”. My guess is a typical response would then be: “Oh, I was just kidding…didn’t mean to offend anyone”…end of flame.

Please give examples.