Originally Posted by suomynona

Backseat moderation is frowned upon because: A) It involves making claims about the rules without authority, which is actually fine until someone gets it wrong and nobody thinks to correct them. B) It implies a false authority, making it more difficult to get an immediate sense of who's right and wrong: It can lead to things like "But <non-moderator-user> said that <heinous crime> was okay!", which can lead to its own issues. C) It makes a post that, if a moderator later intervenes, they have to either refute, delete, edit, or reply to in a situation where that could have been unnecessary. All of these actions would have to be taken with concern to points A and B, in the best cases, or for point D in the worst case. D) Posts regarding rules tend to be at least as off-topic for any specific thread as any post breaking the rules in that thread.