So here's the other part of the question, and what I was actually getting at:
Let's say you're an EE, and you're "all business", and you're not really interested in much outside of EE. What forums are you going to ignore?
--Looking at the technical side of the forums, Curriculum, Pneumatics, and CAD are probably on that list; KOP is probably going to only get half an eye of attention. Most of the others have SOME relation to EE.
--In the competition section of the forums, the Awards and Rules/Strategy subforums jump out as stuff to pay attention to, mainly for stuff pertaining to EE. Maybe some of the rest gets some attention if your team is mentioned.
--And in the "Other" section... yeah, there's a reason that it's got that name. Not much there if you're only looking for technical stuff.
So if you're an EE who really doesn't care much about non-EE stuff, are you really going to want to "patrol" the 2/3 of CD that you stick your nose in when someone forgets to put the EE stuff in the proper subforums? Right, didn't think so. Particularly since CD allows you to set up what you see in the Portal to ignore whatever forums you want to ignore (or, to be more accurate, to only show what you want to show).
I think that's more the reason that the mods only work a few forums each--that's just what they want to focus on.
Here's another suggestion, that might be easier (or harder): The "Mod of the Watch". Basically, for a given period of time (say, 1-2 hours), one trusted moderator has full mod power in all forums, and is "on call". If something crops up and other mods can't handle it due to subforum boundaries or dealing with a "hot" thread, the "Watch" moderator deals with it, at least enough to get it out of sight for review. (I can just see it now: half the mods on CD calling for my head for this one...

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