This was my experience on a couple of subreddits which were a bit smaller than yours. One of the subreddits even covered a topic that often gets a lot of drama

This was my experience on a couple of subreddits which were a bit smaller than yours. One of the subreddits even covered a topic that often gets a lot of drama and high-strung people. But outside of the occasional obvious troll, the communities managed themselves. “Low-quality” posts like memes were effectively disallowed by the community itself, i.e. they would always be downvoted - but if they became popular, so be it. We never got abusive modmail, no one was ever mad at us. If two users started arguing, we’d stay out unless there were actual threats or slurs, which only happened a few times. I do think the situation is different for subreddits that aren’t really “communities” such as /r/pics or a meme subreddit, where most traffic comes from the front page. But the same general philosophy probably still applies to some extent.