I will respond to your other comment in here as well.

It might sounds like it, but I am not speaking for u/siouxsie_siouxv2. So ssv2, please don't hesitate to tell me if my views of what you did are incorrect.

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these explanations just don't happen so not sure what the appropriate waiting period is

The oldest request for a post approval I've replied to this morning was five hours old. As it stands right now we have an okay response time (although it can take 12-14 hours, depending on the day and how busy we are with other stuff), especially if you compare it to other subs. But you can't expect an instant reply. The site would have to actually hire people for something like that.

didn't happen that way either, commenters were a bit disgusted but remarkably civil, posting questions not attacks, remaining acceptably so even after being met with a flippant attitude, memes, and even a "meh.. shit happens" (that's verbatim)

Before she started replying the thread was kind of one sided: "This mod is not objective IMO.", no statement as to why they think that is; several people complaining about their post being removed without adding that it was mostly for breaking rule 5. That is kind of an issue in general. The mods who do the most work on a sub (and ssv2 does the most work here) also get the most flack, because sooner or later, you piss someone of. And when someone is pissed of, they don't care about the whole picture. They don't care that we are just trying to keep the sub at bay sometimes. They don't care that sometimes it it is kinda hard to draw a clear line about what is and isn't relevant to the subreddit topic. They just care about their post. She was a little bit snarky. Instead of saying "the line between what is and isn't relevant isn't very clear here, we will review the post and reconsider" she said, "shit happens". Okay, maybe not a good idea. But she deleted that statement. For you that looks like hiding some kind of evidence, for me it looks like someone who acknowledges that they were too snarky and taking what they said back.

Let's get back to the big picture, though. While we think we are quite lenient when it comes to what we allow here, most of the subscribers who talked to me, don't see it that way. Okay. I don't want to end this with "we agree do disagree", so what exactly can we change here? It might help to clear up rule 5 and to formulate a more exact phrasing.

and that's the whole point, how is that in any way acceptable? get called out on your lousy mod practices, act like a complete punk to your subscribers defending said behavior, then delete all record of it???

Again, not really the way I see it. Lousy mod practices? That specific thread was about one post discussing the state crime/testing lab. It was not about how it handled Avery's blood and not about any new findings that were made there, but the lab itself. ssv2 interpreted it as a somewhat political post that has nothing to do with MaM. She made a judgement call while considering the rules on the sidebar. You could say it was the wrong decision, but you can't call it lousy moderation. Did she act like a 'complete punk'? I don't know, how would you react if everything you got after putting hours of work into something are just people doubting every single one of your decisions because they don't agree with you on one post removal you made. Did she delete all the record? I can see your point here, but like I said before, it looks like she just simply wanted to take back what she said. At the very least she wanted to leave it all behind and maybe avoid more angry messages resulting from those comments. Also, have you never said anything you regretted a day after? I don't think she wanted to hide anything. That obviously didn't work and never works. When you mod long enough, you know that.

Is there a process in place to remove mods?

If you are talking about some kind of public vote, no there isn't. Historically that has never been a good idea on reddit. There are too many ways to abuse that. Mods are added here for having a track record of running subs well and putting in the work. They are not added because they can always please everyone.

I'm gonna be direct here, this whole "we want to remove her" thing is an overreaction. You have someone who helps the sub a lot and ensures some kind of order, one person complains about them and leaves, so the mod has to be thrown out as well? I also don't think her snarky replies and the fact that she used memes is a reason to get rid of her. Finally, when a user breaks the rules here, they get temp ban, but they get to come back. You can't ban us (unless you manage to get us banned site wide through some heavy collusion or get rid of us through r/redditrequest, which all has happened before), but we do have to deal with the consequences when we rub too many people the wrong way and we might have to deal with the fact that people leave and build competing subreddits. Maybe you don't think that is enough punishment, but that is basically how the site works.

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When I watched that first episode on youtube, I would never have imagined, that I would end up here writing this.