Barney

1. What names have you gone by on other sites?
   
2. What made you decide to launch this site?
   
3. Why did you name it Debate Art? And anything we should infer from the name?
   
4. What can we do to help?
   
   ...

1. DA.Admin would be a good user name for you.
   
2. Have a different persona(s) for casual use of the site. On top of many obvious reasons, a good vote should speak for itself, not have opinions on it dictated by it coming from the admin.
   
3. I've seen people suggesting you should ask the moderator of another site for his black book (records of users): Don't! We've crashed on these shores, and should do our best to forgive past grudges; certainly those should not be institutionalized parts of our new experience here. ... If someone repeats familiar stupidity, I'll personally be faster to judge them for their habits, but I'm not the site admin, I'm allowed to be a normal petty user.
   
4. Threads like this should probably be reorganized to have an updated gist section as the second post. Like you've answered all these questions, users could jump to one post with just he Q and A, rather than tracing your answers back to whom asked what, which is needless work and with a larger user base would result in questions being repeated.
5. When disputes arise, try to think in terms of User X and Debate Y. Official rulings could mirror that, further decreasing confirmation bias. As an example:
   

"In a recent dispute raised by several unnamed members, Ragnar (henceforth User X, has been accused of repeated failure as a sportsman. In the topic of US military intervention (henceforth Topic Y), he has voted every time in favor of Con, to include on Debate Z when con forfeited every round until the last so that no rebuttals could be made (which should be an automatic lose), and on various other debates in Topic Y refused to penalize conduct even when con made strictly Ad Hominem attacks full of swear words and sexual slander. It is thus ruled that User X shall lose ALL voting privileges for six months, in addition to Topic Y in perpetuity." 

My two cents...

There needs to be multiple types and levels of moderators.

Forum Moderators 

Deleting spam from the forums could be trusted to many, but reorganizing the forums or locking threads is a top level decision low level mods should lack powers to accidentally enact.

Debate Moderators

Again deleting outright spam is easy to trust. Deleting (or hiding the listing) of offensive debates, would require a greater level of care. We want love spell salesmen banned in short order (call it probation until reviewed by a top level admin?). Fake debates created by peoples alts to give them free wins, at a certain point become obvious, but not something to risk mistakes with. Finally offensive topics call for maximum care, likely multiple admins signing off on the removal (I'd say zero intellectual validity, like neo nazis saying the holocaust must be resumed... if Ren is smarter than Stimpy on the other hand, is without importance, but could serve as a valid exchange of ideas).

Vote Moderators

Sensitive topic to which I might start a thread for the discussion, but in brief... I know to some a series of random symbols is the gold standard of judging debate, but to anyone with intellectual integrity it's an insult to the debaters as well as any judgement which shows evidence of even knowing the debate topic. Then getting harder, there's obvious vote trades (on DDO there was even a guy offering blowjobs for favorable votes), which call for care in handling beyond a quick click of delete. A few levels up there's votes which are low quality, but not intentionally violating the rules; for these I'd say comity review with veto powers (blocking the removal)... of course the primary goal of such things should not be policing, but rather vote analysis to give positive feedback to improve future votes ("I agree with x" gets deleted, any vote which tried is okay).