There is no such thing as "low-effort" and "high-effort" in volunteer-only projects like Discovery. All staff members, whether they did a single rumour or processed a single player request, already did their contribution in the spare time as their passion for the project allows. Same applies to contributors. There are no metrics for such things if we're not translating it into a high real money value.
"Low-effort" would be doing absolutely nothing and just complaining about the sorry state of X or Y.
Players, factions and Houses can absolutely have their proposals accepted as long as it's in line with canon/balance/systems/plugin stuff, depending on the context. There is no ill will to sabotage players, only our desire to have things on a roleplaying server as close to canon lore and spirit of the setting as possible.
And yet developers deny admin-related things (rephacks) even when they fall inline with established 3 year old lore that hasn't changed via new written lore. It's easy for devs to do what they want, not fix the issue at hand and completely screw over people who put effort into something.
And there is absolutely low and high effort comparisons. Low effort would be reporting a bug, but doesn't mean that it is low impact contribution. So maybe don't try to raise staff as something above regular members, who can also put a lot of effort into playing this game even when they are playing along sorry state of story devs.