An Don,
You are spot on. I have lost count of the number of times that I have seen posts go off topic from a single post, typically from a very well established user (and as often as not, a moderator). The issue here is that this IS a community and it is NOT a personal playground for a few very frequent posters.
However, there is one way and one way only to make sure that things run smoothly, and that is for posters to have respect and regard for their fellow community members. It cannot be done by rules upon rules etc. I remember before there were any moderators, and I believe that it ran fine albeit that it was a bit chaotic. The trouble at the moment in my view is coming from a combination of moderators being a little trigger happy (hard for them not to be in reality) and a bit of friction between them and the other habitual users who are not moderators...
Unless Patricia wants to abolish the member moderators and move exclusively to employee moderators like samlad and VampireJackie, this problem will not go away.
There was a vibrant user community on a couple of other sites in the past and the demise of the community was entirely as a result of bad management of one sort or another, i.e. the users only drifted away when it stopped being fun.
I think what Pat did in trying to harness the energy of some of the strongest posting members was very clever (i.e making them Moderators) but it hasn't really worked. The Advertising revenue is a direct function of the vibrancy of the site as a whole, see IIE as a classic example.
If I were asked for my advice, I would readily give it....
BLD