We've discussed "like" buttons and such, but every discussion forum of this type that has instituted such a system, in my opinion, has gone downhill, because it attracts people looking for clicks rather than substantive commentary.
Regarding "enforcement of the rules," one of the things that gives this place it's character, for better sometimes, and sometimes for worse, is that we value the forum ethos over a set of rules. We don't try to hammer down everything that seems to be outside the norm, and we sometimes moderate subjectively on the basis of the impact of a discussion or post on the community ethos, and we consider whether deleting a series of posts or editing a thread will actually make things better or whether it will stir up even more controversy. We don't want people to feel that this is a police state, because that's not a good forum ethos either, and sometimes rafts of people have washed up here from other forums where there is a sense of excessive moderation.
There are some topics or individual posters who might be under observation for some time before we act on them, because we can imagine various outcomes, and we want to see where the discussion goes and give people a chance to redeem themselves upon reading responses from other members of the community, and sometimes we may have to ignore a minor problem to take care of some larger issue. If we had more moderators, we could devote attention to more issues.
We also try to take a range of views into account, including those we may individually disagree with, and what one person sees as actionable, another may not. We don't often vote on moderation decisions, but try to maintain a consensus.