Yeah, perhaps if there were an incentive to flag plagiarism and spam, as well as a clear definition of spam that would motivate the community to police itself. There would still need to be body like the steam cleaner to verify but would at least a big part of the work would be done.

I think a problem we have is that we all pretend that there is no governing body or rules but there clearly are both, but the apparatus for discussing/changing them is slow to nonexistant. Having designated channels for discussion could potentially help make this platform even more awesome for everyone...