Sorry Andrea, I'm not clear on what you mean. Do you mean the system was created for high reputation users? Or that it was created for users that don't like big-list questions? Or something else?

I like the vote trading idea as an ad hoc solution if we can get people to do it. Here are the relevant posts about pre-emptive votes to reopen, which would of course be a much better solution:
my request on meta.SE
similar request on meta.SO
Robert Cartaino's suggested implementation

@VP: I've read all those threads before, but it takes some time to look over them again and scan for the dismissiveness you're claiming is there. Of the couple that I've looked at so far, I just don't see it. As far as I can tell, when somebody expresses a dissenting opinion, it's usually discussed very thoroughly to figure out what the actual disagreement is, or somebody links to a previous discussion where the same issue came up. Moreover, it's not always the same people expressing dissenting opinions. I simply don't agree with your caricature of the meta community as "insiders" and "outsiders", "us" and "them". Aside from not being accurate in this case, I think it's counterproductive to ever divide the world that way. If you regard meta as polarized, is there anything that isn't? It's not possible to get everyone to always agree about everything, but I think that everybody gets a fair shake.

@Emerton: Thanks for your post. I think I understand VP a bit better now. Regarding the first problem (issues are decided on meta, rather than per the FAQ), there are basically two reasons for it:

1. The FAQ should be short. Almost nobody reads it as is. Expanding it to include every possible contingency would only insure that it never gets read.
2. There's no way to predict every possible contingency. Even if it were possible, doing so would be a mistake: making up a completely rigid set of rules and sticking to them no matter what is a recipe for trouble. When something unexpected happens, its much better for people to try to understand the situation and to understand each other than to quote some holy document.

So meta is a kind of "second order FAQ". I think that meta itself if fairly consistent. The same issues tend to come up over and over, and they are usually handled in the same manner each time. Sometimes we're better at handling problems the second or third time around.

Regarding the second issue:

His most extreme example is "I am annoyed by seeing this question on the front page, hence I am going to prevent anyone else from contributing to the answers", and this doesn't seem to have been refuted

I agree that this is not a good reason for closing, and it stirs up trouble whenever anybody says it. It hasn't been refuted, and I don't think it will be. However, when a question is frequently bumped and people get annoyed with it, there's usually some other reason that they want it closed. I outlined the reasons that I thought the question should be closed earlier in this thread. "I'm annoyed by it being bumped" was certainly not one of the reasons.

@Qiaochu:

It's "peerless leader". Although I agree with the sentiment =)!