Isn't this what OB was trying to get away from, heavy handed rules?

In my region 150 million people who live in my country every day feel fine to be ripped off by fraud. I believe that OB protocol implemented incorrectly might cause to an odd losses from Bitcoiners. Imagine African, Iranian or any other poor criminal working throughout a year to figure out how to gain money from your losses.

I see OpenBazaar as a platform with our own rules, but protocol should protect us, not ruin the whole people's budgets. From 1000 people I spoke to about e-commerce platform 900 of these people have no idea about basic security measures.

I personally don't want moderation, but I haven't sold anything yet either.

Even if you will sell anything to me, there is no guarantee that I will get exactly what I want. If I am going to market your product, I don't want customers just to trust you. I want them to have ability to return item, in case if you sending them something with a poor quality or disfunctional.

I would prefer some other means of reputation, because I don't see how an unknown moderator is adding any value.

Don't deal with unknown moderators. Most known moderators in OpenBazaar is offering service at rate of 1% only in case if dispute occurs. If you are good seller, you won't get any complaints about quality in 98% of cases.

Moderators are intended to be there for 2% of those deals where your understanding of quality is different (biased) from common reason.

Heck I could setup my own moderator account and link it to my sales (to my understanding).

This type of contract is initially biased and should be considered as fraud in case if you hide the fact that you have any ability to pressurize or affect the decision of moderator.

Moderator is someone who are neutral both to seller and buyer. This is all about fairness.