Pretty much every news story about the Reddit situation that also touches on migration to other services throws out “power user” as distinct from “mods” as though it’s an established term with a clear definition.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s not. And a search on the term shows wildly different definitions, from X amount of karma, to users whose posts are upvoted simply by virtue of their user name, to people who actually post instead of lurking or commenting.
If after a decade on Reddit I don’t understand the term, I can’t imagine what it means to the layperson and thus fail to see the utility of the term in news stories. I can’t fix journalists using the term, but it would be nice to at least learn what others understand it to mean.
You are absolutely right with your description. One thing to note since OP was looking for the distinction: most mods are power users. It’s usually the most active and enthusiastic users who have the desire to become a moderator.
I get that mods are a subset of power users. But it seems the bar for the latter may be as low as “anyone who, upon reading an interesting article, heads over to Reddit, checks for an extant link, and if none is found posts one.”
I seriously thought that was table stakes for using the site.
The large majority of users on Reddit just scroll through clicking links, maybe upvoting or commenting once in a while