> How is a staff member not as important as a doujin artist?

Staff members are important in providing a working environment for the users.
If they do that, that's good work and users should be grateful for it.

On the other hand, a site that is almost entirely based on user contributions would not be anything without its users contributing. Valuing mod choices with stickies, wordfilters, etc. are more about putting staff members' opinions and preferences over user preferences than about simply providing a working environment.

Also, after seeing the Otakon footage you cannot deny that the staff was mostly celebrating itself.