I think in the Meuh thread some folks were irritated when he created a rule and deleted posts because of the "laziness" of over quoting. He thought it would be good to prune ; however, it may be better, as Yefi suggest, to have programing that causes nesting rather than people complaining about over nesting.
Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up. Well, over-quoting is definitely problematic and I don't understand why some users persist in doing it.
Regarding an elected moderator to bow out or pass the baton, that seems a bit problematic - but many of the voters here were likely of the impression that anyone running for such WO "owner" position would be committed to carrying out such duties for a reasonable period of time, such as a year or more.. ... and well, I suppose in the end, it is up to Theymos if he believes that passing on ownership would be reasonable or if he would go through some other process, such as an election.. or maybe extending the election based on new information.
Usually the original owner of a self-moderated thread can impose any kind of rule-set. This means that they could just delete all of your posts just because they don't like your username. However, this is a very special case of transferring ownership. I do agree that a time period should be chosen (by theymos), after which it should be re-visited and decided whether the current owner should continue being the owner or whether someone else should be assigned to it.