We tried opening the doors to suggestions and polls and guess what? we ended up with a split community each time. Nobody got exactly what they wanted, and most people were enraged after each attempt. Maybe some other websites can be run by the community, not this one. The best thing to do is then to talk among ourselves, listen to the community without asking for advice or guidance and use common sense when making decisions.
Not to mention that most community based ideas are not even doable realistically. What we can do is to try and train a team of devs, one at a time, and then grow from within. It's hard, it takes time and effort and it takes patience, but there can be no shortcuts. For now, this is the only way forward.
At times we too feel that things could be better and feel very bad about it, at other times we soar high on your praise. We're only human here, learning as we go. It easy to say that another approach would be better when you've never been on the other side, never felt the pressure, never been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of code or the complexity of the system we operate. It's true, things could be done much better by a large team of experienced professionals. Sadly, we don't have the funds to hire them.