My experience here is mainly due to my activity in Chess and Earth Science Stack Exchanges. While I see very active moderators in Chess Exchange: Brian Towers and Glorfindel, I don't see the diamond so frequently in use in Earth Science. We have only two moderators, gerrit and hichris123, and they are not as active as the chess site mods.
My intuition tells me that the reputed scientists on the site are not interested in helping with moderation too much, and that they do moderation tasks just because the site lacks necessary moderation. I say that after starting to close the identify-my-rock questions. It took months to completely close and delete those questions while I am sure at chess Brian Towers or Glorfindel would have settled it in an afternoon. I feel it is unnecesary to disturb our valuable scientists answering questions asking them for intervention to close and reopen questions. At chess site Brian Towers is retired and allday joined and once a "duplicate" or a "needs clarification" or an "is off-topic" question appear it is automatically closed. If the poster edits his question and rep users ask to reopen it is Brian Towers himself who reopen the question using "his magic hammer"
I am sure some of our rep users visit the site daily and can help the site if we allow them to have access to moderation tools.
Should we have elections?
*I am expresing an opinion and I am not saying this to postulate myself, I cannot be moderator with my lack of english and my emotional ups and downs due to my menthal illness.