I was going to retract that comment... I have No Opinion on the advisability of current moderation policy and practice, in general. It's just this one issue where I hope that the powers will eventually see sense; so complaining about the bare fact that they choose to exercise their authority is not the thing to do.
I often feel guilty for ignoring other people's comments or questions, and frustrated when other people seem to be ignoring me. If I can't indicate to someone exactly why I'm not answering, or can't receive such an indication myself, I can at least help my future selves and others obtain a better probability distribution over such reasons. To that end, I'm listing all of the reasons I can think of for someone to not respond to a comment/question, to save the effort of regenerating these hypotheses from scratch each time and prevent the possibility of failing to consider the actual reason. Note that these are not meant to be mutually exclusive.
If I missed any reasons (that happen often enough to be worth including in this list), please give them in the comments. See also this related comment.