DNA, to be honest the best thing to do is approach things with an open mind. You hear the opinions of ex-moderators and members wanting power much more than you do actual mods, so be careful of the element of bias. Note that in your thread, current mods and contributors had no complaints to speak of. And although I'm not supposed to divulge information about what happens in the mod forums, I'll say that WPM /just/ said that if we have a problem with how things are run, then we should voice it. Things are open and we communicate, and you really should take what others say with a pinch of salt.
As for helping the forum, do you mean contributing stuff? It's great that you want to help, but I thought you were more of a TCG guy, so I'm not the person to really talk to unless you want to do VG things