(1) Yes. There is no middle ground. Any action taken by anyone with extra buttons can become endless drama, can be the grounds for confected outrage.
Disagree. There are plenty of spaces, for example corporate-owned forums, where it's in the TOS that the owners can do what they want. That doesn't by any means spare them from drama. There is an endless supply of people lulled into getting personally invested in places, whether they are "free" or not. Time spent there becomes an illusion of ownership. Democracy doesn't spare a space from drama either, otherwise politics would be an uncontentious issue.
I saw something on the news recently about an enormous fatberg that was discovered in a sewer, and I realized something. This place isn't a dustbin and it isn't even a sewer. It's the internet equivalent of a fatberg. Because the crap just gets stuck and never goes anywhere.
Overall I agree with you. I've been on plenty of internet forums. There are always drama llamas who get butturt when a moderator uses their buttons, and those drama llamas either get over it or they don't last long. Problem solved either way. Personally, if I don't like the way that the admins and mods run a site I will have my say, calmly and rationally, and then I'll either get over it and stay or I'll get over it and go somewhere else. Because that's part of being a grown up, learning to get over shit.
But the reality is that in I^2, the fatberg of the internet, if someone disagrees with an admins use of a button or with an admins enforcement or interpretation of a rule, that just becomes fuel for a bunch of stupid neverending grudges and butthurt and drama. And it's never let go of, and it's never forgotten.
As I said, people who refuse to get over shit don't last long at other places. What happens to people who get banned everywhere else? Guess where they end up? The one place where it's nearly impossible to get banned. I^2 doesn't work like other places, and expecting it to work like other places and for people to get over shit or leave like they do in other places, obviously doesn't work.
So a rule that works elsewhere, it's obviously not working here. Because that butthurt and spite will eventually see this place close down altogether.