You're welcome to run yours as transparently as you like. Encouraged even. In some cases it's just not feasible or practical.

Let me put it like this, back in my hayday modding the defaults, I'd do tens of thousands of mod actions a month. All of them were open to moderator review at any time if another mod was so inclined. Most of them were run of the mill, tedious, approve reports/remove flagrant rule violations/etc. But do you really think anyone in the community would have been bothered to actually look at the individual actions? Or do you think they'd just say 'Well look at all those actions, he must just be going nuts and removing shit on a whim!'? My own experience has led me to believe just that.

Users were encouraged to send a modmail any time they needed clarification for a removal, and did our very damnedest to provide that reason clearly and quickly.

Maybe you could make removing a post or comment require a removal reason. It would be tedious as shit and annoying as hell, but I suppose it would be fair. But then you're going to waste a lot of mods' time arguing with users over why calling someone a 'fag' in the sub is inappropriate and worthy of removal. And the bigger the sub, the bigger the mod team, the more mod actions, the more time spent arguing about them. Seems like a waste of time to me, personally.

You can't expect a mod team to operate effecitvely under that kind of scruitiny though. And hell, the rules are posted in the sidebar, and usually on the submit page, and usually in the wiki. I agree that it sucks to have to your post removed, but the onus is on the user to follow the rules in order to participate in the sub.

And I don't know where this notion came that every single mod action is of the greatest important, that every one needs to be inspected and verified as 'worthy'? The vast majority of mod actions are tedious and mind-numbingly boring and redundant. For your average mod who has even a modicum of professionalism and sense of responsibility, controversy will hardly ever arise. And when it does, it's with someone being illogical and unreasonable. Forcing mods to exhibit that level of disclosure is just going to waste their time dealing with more of those unreasonable poeple over every single issue and nonissue alike, they'll never have time to actually moderate their sub.

Speaking of which, is it not still their sub? Where's the threshold? What if I start using /r/splattypus to log various posts and tibits from around the web as I happen across them, as sort of journal if you will. And suppose I leave it open to subscribers because hey, maybe some of them have the same tastes as I do and would appreciate it. At what point does any of the subscribers have the authority to influence how I run my sub?

Whether it's a private sub or a single-modded public sub, or even a default that's been around for 10 years. The first mod elects mods to uphold his/her standards of running the sub. And they, in turn, bring on more mods who fit their ideals and principles. And so by the transitive property, even 10 generations down the line, the very newest mod is still operating under the approval and endorsement of the very first mod. And as long as that top mod is active on reddit and actively modding in that sub, they are the only ones who should have any influence over how any other mod in that sub operates.