due to recent events these communities are only being moderated by only a banned mod

I thought that the expectation was to have a post or comment from before asking for moderation powers (to show you've been active in the community or something like that), not to post after asking for moderation. I thought it was strict because expecting people to have people linking to an old comment might not possible considering how relatively new the instance is, but that's not what was expected then oh well.