One thing I think is interesting is how tildes.net is planning to handle moderation.
Basically - they give you broad powers initially, and take them away from you if you show yourself you can't be trusted. So if you report a user and it's a bad-faith report, they can ding you. If you keep making bad-faith reports, then over time you lose the ability to create reports at all.
By contrast - if you repeatedly prove to make good reports, and your reports are usually actioned upon, you become "trusted" over time and your reports may cause content to be removed as soon as you report it. (And of course - if a moderator restores a post that you got removed, that counts as a ding against you.)
Over time, trusted users get hand-picked to become moderators. This has the ability to create "power users", of course, but a moderator that acts in bad faith can become less trusted over time and potentially loses their privileges. The thought is that the risk of power users is less than the detriment of an unmoderated community.