I was once a moderator on the Minecraft forums, way back in my freshman year or so of high school. Times were fun.
Essentially: I had, by that point, become a well-recognized member of the Minecraft community, taking part in gentrified clan units and hosting events like the Minecraft Clan Olympics and such. Moderation was sort of a privilege, toobut, like EviLore and the other intelligent mods here, the moderation team was effectively managed and held to high standards. Though I've heard it's not been too pretty over there, ever since multiplayer survival brought a massive explosion in popularity to both Notch and Minecraft in general, moderation was easy, facilitated by some interesting forum functions (mainly a group-based reporting system that made it easier to deal with board issues), and I liked it a lot.
Eventually, though, I left the community to focus on marching band and music, neither of which I feel were necessarily more productive and helpful to me in the long run. I wasn't very good at making things within the Minecraft engine, but I was a great guy to be with back then, and the moderating team did a good job of juggling responsibilities. In some ways, too, the quantity of adults and teenagers like me was well-balanced, to the point that most of the mods knew what they were doing. Looking back on my career there, though, it's not hard to understand that I also set a precedent for those same mods to leave the forum entirely. I was the first to become a "Retired Moderator"many former allies soon retired themselves, and we were all alumni of the pre-popular era of Minecraft community history.
Pretty cool, and I'm still a bit proud of those brief months. I've also moderated in a few other places, but they were insignificant all-in-all.