I never had any issues with either Sal or Feld. Good mods in my opinion, nothing but good things to say about their posting styles either. Soot on the other hand... that's another post topic entirely.
No disrespect or offense taken and those are valid points that I can only partially answer. My absence was health/medical related. I did come back from time to time and kept tabs with Magic, keeping her in the loop of what was going on with me but didn't post much because I wasn't up to it due to the health issues.
As Soots pointed out, I do have experience both in Mod and Admin duties on a number of vbulletin sites over a number of years with both public and private sites ... including the high-end technical / behind-the-scenes stuff that Shaggy does around here such as new site installs, updates, backups, database stuff, etc. The admin team knows about that and perhaps played into the decision. I do not know if others have/had been asked before me, only the admin team can answer that.
not by me, that's for sure. I'd have to put myself at the top of the list if we dumped people for opinions as I'm never afraid to voice my own.
Hope this at least somewhat answered your questions or concerns.