I'm not necessarily opposed to moderators, as long as it is more of a bully pulpit to encourage civility, and only very sparingly used to keep people on topic if a tangent arises.

If something is CLEARLY in the wrong forum to begin with, then a reminder (maybe a lock on the thread) would be OK with me.

As for deleting someone's posts, there must be some solid guidelines developed for that, with a VERY high offense (profanity, etc.) needed to warrant such action. Also, these should be clearly marked as "Deleted by moderator due to *****." Even in these cases, probably editing offensive posts would be a better idea.