I've always maintained that I think the way we do things here sucks, we've just never been able to come up with a better way. You're right that it drives a wedge between the mods and users, and often makes both sides annoyed with each other.

I've tried some other things over the years (see the stars system for my most infamous debacle), but none have really worked. I even tried separating myself from the mods once, but that didn't work well either.