Well, I've been engaging this with an assumption of lack of continuity with the current mod team.

The current team is names inactive over one year, plus Doggos and C who reserve the right of indefinite silence. I would presume those two accounts are responsible enough to let matters proceed when they've been informed and remain silent.

I don't know how the initial decision arose, but if it was by admin without full agreement by all the founding mods then at least those mods didn't war. However, 5 years later a changed situation that prompts mod action due to community consensus, if not opposed overtly by admin, would not be a wheel war. If admin undid something without public deliberation that mods publicly deliberated over, that would be wheel war (but if that description applies to anything then it would be like forums clearly created in bad faith and rapidly nulled).

I don't think charm is what works here. Personally it's still hard for me to justify making a case that the community is unified on any change, because discussion hasn't run its course and analysis of consensus may not be straightforward, and then there remains the question of what ruleset the community would favor for moderation. When I first implied ease of moderation of this community looked average, I think I was wrong, because there's a lot more going on than I realized. If I have time and desire to report it fully then I would try to account for all views expressed (no matter how trollish) and hope that some consistency of consensus can be gleaned therefrom. Perhaps I'll have enough vision to make a proposal that can get it over the hump, but for now it's the threads that have arisen.