What rationale is used by moderators for judging whether or not to censor questions and answers?

I came here from Yahoo!Answers as a result of having experienced massive amounts of censorship with no seeming rationale at all. Questions and answers—often entirely uncontroversial ones—would simply disappear with no explanation as to why. There was an appeal process, but in the two years I was there and all the appeals I had filed, I never had a single successful appeal; indeed, given that the only responses I received were identical form letters, I suspect there really is no appeal process at all. I certainly have never heard of an appeal there succeeding.

I came to Fluther because I was referred by someone who told me people here are somewhat smarter than AnswerBag (and wildly smarter than Y!A, but then clams are smarter than the neanderthals at Y!A.)

And indeed, Fluther seems to garner more thoughtful responses to questions, but I’ve been growing increasingly puzzled at the sort of censorship which occurs here. It’s nice that questions get sent for re-editing rather than simply being dropped into the Memory Hole, but some of the choices made by the moderators is… well, frankly, it’s weird.

For example, as a result of a dialectical discussion I had with a couple of acquaintances about the relative merits of von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, I asked a question this morning about it. I figured, it’s a matter of opinion rather than a dry factual answer, so it goes into “social.” So far so good. But I had the question sent back for editing because of the title. My original title was: “Philosophy of War: East VS West.” This seemed to me to cover the topic pretty well, and I’m scratching my head about what was wrong with it.

I’m asking this question here rather than sending a private note to the moderators because, while this particular question prodded my question, I’m more interested in what sort of rationale the moderators are using to make these decisions. Please don’t just point me at the rules, I’ve read them and understand them. What I’d like to know is whether there’s any equivalent to the news agency style guides that moderators here use, or if it’s simply left to the personal whim of each individual (which might account for some of the odd editorial choices I’ve seen; I was a bit puzzled why a recent answer about licorice by zenele got deleted, for example).

I’m not complaining, I’m just a bit mystified.