Hey Steve,

AO has changed... some for the worse, some for the better... lately... I'm one of those for the worse things (but seemingly only for American members.. hehe and no I'm not trying to start anything)... Technology and Security seem to be at a low lately, even the mailing lists I subscribe to are down in that aspect... which on a forum leads to bored.. .and boredom on these things always causes trouble.. which is what we have... We also have a highly stressed political situtation in the world which is frequently broached here and we unlike a good ol' fashioned debate, we make it personal or take it personally... We read the literal when we should read the general or the general when we should read the literal... We also have a lot of immaturity... (my political beliefs would have me classed in that by those that I label as immature but there are others as well)... It's as it will always be a revolving soap opera..

As far as your question of mods... How it happens kinda varies...

ZenCoder was announced and that was the first i'd heard of it... and for the most part it was a good choice (I'm still of the belief that a mod should be 100% impartial in the forums they moderate... but no one else agrees)....
I suggested a forum and someone mentioned spreading mods too thin, so I volunteered to do it if they wanted... got a PM saying I was doing it.. I'm just trying to stay out.. make important things sticky and delete requested threads.. unless it get's outta hand.. but it's Phishing and CyberScams.. that seems unlikely.
HogFly suggested the Forensics forum (I believe) and is quite obviously the best person to be the mod.
As far as I've heard Spyder sent in a message begging to be made a Mod.... and they finally relented and allowed a non-technical post whore to becom a moderator... He's become more technical and less of a post whore thankfully... but unfortunately still allows himself to be easily angered and let's his feelings cloud his judgement.

That's about it...

Peace,
HT