The difference in control over mods is due to the fact that they are human beings and each individual has his own way of managing, the most prominent example of this is @frodocooper, who was very strict, I remember that he used to lock posts and modify them, and you rarely find a topic that has not been modified
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This is @theymos reply
I restored the four deleted topics, but since they were all very similar, I locked all but one of them.
Except for a few special cases, it should not be policy for subjects to be confined to megathreads. It's OK for there to be overlap between multiple active threads. If a board seems to become monopolized by similar-looking topics, then some lockings or perhaps deletions might be warranted, but Hardware is low-volume.
The example you mentioned is normal compered to @frodocooper. It is from June 05, 2011, 01:31:45 AM, and at that time @theymos was not even the administrator of this site.
It's surprising how well-documented history can become totally forgotten... Satoshi created the forum on Nov 22, 2009, and was head administrator until almost 2011. Then Sirius was head administrator until 2012, which is when I took over.
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Overmoderation of the Hardware forum 
