I have never done it but it seems like one of the most thankless endevours you can take on. If you do it right, from the outside it looks like you are doing nothing.
It is like the duck on the pond. Looks calm on top but the legs are frantically keeping them in place.
my only experience led to 'delegate fast, most people are reasonable' I helped build Jolt.co.uk & Squadlinks, a large UK gaming site during the Quake/Counterstrike era, while we had issues with occasional individuals, on the whole our forums were nice places to hang out, we had legions of gamers who loved taking ownership of their sub, they'd then sub delegate moderation, being liberal with trust engendered trust and we maintained a virtuous spiral, I imagine because our audience were closely aligned it made things a lot easier.
I worked a lot on blueyonder cs/dod communities at the time online and on irc.
It was mostly OK, the biggest eye opener at the time (I was 20ish) was when I'd hop onto one of the other admins (female) irc account and holy hell that was an experience in private conversations.
well recalled, that is very true and I am glad you raised that, obnoxious, on the other side of the coin, I fondly recall the UK Multiplay series of LAN events, for me these events showed that in person, people are just nicer, perhaps online it's not just the 'safety' of anonymity, it's closer to machismo posturing with a dash of mob rule combined with the tragedy of the masses, in real life, with a ratio of about 999:1 I saw a lot of good respectful behaviour and it was a great to be a part of that, that community had community at the core in a very genuine way, they deserved their success.
It is like the duck on the pond. Looks calm on top but the legs are frantically keeping them in place.