Well thanks for the appreciation, but I'm not a fan of popularity contests and I don't think the other staff would be bothered about trying to win it either, but like has already been mentioned it's hard for you guys to guage how much work a specific moderator puts in. I may only seem like I might be doing more because I'm more active posting on the forums than a lot of the other mods, but that doesn't mean to say I am doing more work and they are doing less. Some mods post very little but they are often very busy behind the scenes. I probably don't do much compared to Badbear or some other global mods but I do what I can when I can.
Id argue that this is highly subjective and depends greatly on the subboards you frequently read. I for myself barely see any actions by Hilariousandco, but plenty by grue and gmaxwell. I also know that the "MOVED: *title*" threads are optional, so many actions by mods are not seen by the community. I also suspect that the admins and global mods do lots of work, but I have no way to judge that.
Yeah, I prefer not to leave the 'ghost threads' behind and have only used them a few times when necessary. Don't want all my posts to be MOVED etc and I'll usually just PM the user instead if it's a rule or something they weren't aware of.