xwwt's Journal: /. Moderation Moderation

I have spent some time recently looking over moderation and understanding some of the tweaks around it. Also spent a lot of time looking at comments in live stories and reading emails from site users about modding. Typically the messages range from astroturfing to people with a vendetta.
So my questions to you are:
Is /. moderation broken?
Is /. moderation out of date?
What would you use to help manage signal-to-noise?