At the risk of saying something silly, I'll throw in my 2 cents.
Being no expert about forum software in general, and SMF in particular, I can only say modeller's comments look reasonable to me, from a technical point of view. The fact that there's a mismatch between actual responsibilities and SMF "slot" assignments is indeed something that should be fixed, as the "expired document" problem reported before.
OTOH, I don't see this place being plagued with spam or a high number of misbehaving posters, name calling or things like that. IOW, my (limited, I admit) experience here tells me there's nothing (so) wrong that prevents experts and newcomers to do here what they come for. I.e. asking questions, providing answers, discussing about programming, microcontrollers and electronics in general.
So could the forum be better managed from a technical point of view ? It seems so. Is there a compelling need for this improvement ? It seems not. Or at least, I haven't seen those in charge of moderation and administration complain about technical shortcomings that make their life hard (at least in public).
As a user, the only real technical concern I have is about forum performance. Maybe an SMF ugprade would bring benefits in this area. But then again, I can live with the occasional performance problem, and I think it's reasonable that a (frightening) task such as an upgrade of a huge forum like this is subjected to the time constraints of the admins' agenda.