I was a moderator on Reddit off and on for like six years, so yes I did. Heavy moderation is the only thing that kept larger communities on topic - r/Askhistorians being the shining example. The amount of effort required to keep spaces from devolving into low effort hodpodges of memes and such was notable.
But it was worth it. Lemmy will grow, and moderation will probably have to grow as well, but I hope that the mod-user relationship here will be healthier and we can rely more on good faith interpretations of rules so we don't need to resort to pages of detailing no one will read.