In the early days of this site, it was common to flirt with the idea of running it more democratically. This was correctly deemed unfeasible during the Age of Struggle Sessions and the arbitrary dictatorship of the mods was cemented.
But maybe the problem wasn't democracy itself, but trying to jump the gun by modeling the site democracy after bourgeois or proletarian democracies. What we need to do is go back to the roots, reform the site to be more like ancient Athenian democracy.
I suggest the first reform is to implement a system of Ostrakismos, where once in a while there is a thread where we can name other users, and if one or more of these comments gets above a certain threshold of upvotes, the named user with the most upvotes on the comment gets banned for a year.
running it democratically is kinda nonsensical, ultimately whoever wants to put effort into maintaining the community makes the rules. process to get on to modding is pretty easy, if you want more say then you should put in more effort.
you cant run a site like its a political entity. its all on volunteer basis. the only thing you can really do is make sure you prune mod lists whenever someone does something reactionary (or make sure mod spots are only given to long time users). if this were run by a party, then you could easily manage the site through bylaws, but that isnt how things work here, it isnt tied to meatspace.