I'm surprised that you feel that way; I've been a moderator for longer, but the guidance I've gotten on moderatorship hasn't changed all that much. The guidance includes the janitor bit, but it also includes the human element and guidance bits. I've always felt that at least on small to medium sites (it's different at the scale of Stack Overflow), the technical side was only a small part of moderation. And that's coming from a scientist turned engineer, a background that's stereotypically driven to underestimate the human element.
Let me quote from the blog post “A Theory of Moderation” (formerly hosted at https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/), which is linked in moderator nomination threads on beta sites, on the election nomination page for graduate sites, and in the email you receive from Stack Exchange when you're offered a beta moderator position¹.
So in summary, if you are a community moderator on a Stack Exchange
site, here's what to expect:
As a moderator, your actions now represent the community, so you will
be held to a higher standard of behavior. You are an ambassador of
trust, with the same sorts of rights that the official development
team and community coordinators have.
Your goal is to guide the community with gentle -- but firm --
intervention. Respect your fellow community members at all times;
demonstrate fairness and impartiality in your actions.
Whenever possible, try to leave frequent comments on posts where
you've taken (or considered taking) a moderator action, explaining the
reasoning. This is important so that community members can learn the
norms of the community and the moderation policies.
Keep the site reasonably on topic by closing, migrating, or removing
blatantly off-topic questions.
Regularly check for flagged posts, and decide if further action is
warranted.
In the case of serious disputes, communicate directly with users via
email to help mediate and resolve those disputes.
The wording has changed a bit from the original. In particular point #3 about leaving comments was added in December 2010. Comparing with your points:
- “growing a community of knowledgeable contributors - even on graduated sites” — depending on what you mean by “grow”, this may or may not be covered. If you mean grow as in recruit participants, point 1 reminds you that you official status as a moderator makes you an ambassador — but if you meant that moderators are supposed to go out and evangelize, then no, that's neither required of nor restricted to moderators. If you mean grow as in protect and help the community as it grows, that's definitely covered by points 2 and 6. If you mean grow as in, yourself, be a knowledgeable contributor, that's expected, again, from point 2, as well as from “guide by example” which comes up elsewhere, but moderators are not expected to bear more than their share of content generation; I'll have more on that topic further below.
- “encouraging self-moderation” — hence point 3. I think point 2 could be clarified that guidance includes encouragements to self-moderation (like telling users to vote to close rather than merely comment to complain about a question they think doesn't belong on the site).
- “encouraging a friendly and sane environment” — points 1, 2 and 6.
- “fostering good meta discussions” — this one should be added to point 3.
So I do see a few points that should be updated in this post:
- Clarify #2 as discussed above.
- Mention meta in #3.
- Remove the mention of email in #6 since moderators are strongly discouraged from using email — they're supposed to use chat and, for serious private issues, moderator messages.
In any case, if you aren't getting out of it that a moderator's role is primarily the human element, the guidance definitely needs to emphasize that more.
My own take on what being a moderator entails would be three points.
- You get extra tools, such as flag handling. Just like users with the vote to close privilege should exercise that privilege to keep the site running, you need to use these tools to keep the site running.
- You are the ultimate arbiter of disputes, unless they rise above your level to the site administrators. While anyone can act as a mediator, that diamond gives you more weight.
- Every community has charismatic leaders, people whom at least part of the community regards as people who act in the interests of the community, and trust to resolve issues in a satisfactory manner. You don't need to be a moderator to be a charismatic leader, but a good moderator should be one of the charismatic leaders.
Now, how to do all of these human element things… That's missing from all the guidance. Writing the documentation of how flags work is easier than writing the documentation on how humans work. While some of it can be taught, a lot has to come from experience. That's why we have Q&A sites (your site's and the main meta — and also, for issues that are not really specific to Stack Exchange there is now Community Building) and chat rooms where moderators can find guidance.
Now, as promised, some thoughts on “growing a community of knowledgeable contributors” and guiding by example. You don't need to be a moderator to guide by example. The diamond next to your name may lead to your words having more credence, but it is not a necessity by any means.
Upvoting good posts and downvoting bad ones, commenting to explain why you made an edit or voted to close or reopen a question when the reason is not obvious, suggesting that people take an issue to chat and meta, participating in meta discussions are all things that need to happen in a functional community. Moderators have no monopoly on these things and no technical advantage over a user with sufficient reputation. Moderators have an advantage when settling an issue, because they can edit/close/reopen/delete/… immediately. But anybody except for very new users can initiate discussions. As a moderator, you should do it, but that's only because as a user who wants the site to succeed, you should do it.
Guiding the community in other ways is something that non-moderators can do too. For example, A guide to moderating crypto.stackexchange yourself - close voting was initially written by a moderator — but it's been copied to other meta sites, not always by moderators. As a moderator, you should look for issues like this that your community doesn't deal with satisfactorily (another example is the excessive commenting mentioned by enderland on Workplace). But as a non-moderator who wants the site to succeed, you should also look for such issues and you can make similar posts.
One way I've been influential on several Stack Exchange sites is by writing detailed answers that not only provide a fish, but also explain what kind of bait I used, discuss what kind of currents that fish is to be found in, and warn of the environmental consequences of overfishing. I don't do that only because writing long texts is easier than summarizing them, or because I like pontificating; I do it because that's the kind of answers I want to read, and I'm setting an example. I've heard from several Unix & Linux contributors that my answers inspired them, and I consider that my biggest success. Being a moderator would have been irrelevant for that, even mildly distracting.
¹ I presume that you're reminded if you get elected too. I don't know for sure when I was elected, I was already a beta moderator, so I didn't become a moderator at that point, and I didn't receive an email.
<censored>a mod is supposed to do in an SE community.