Thanks for the discussion and the consideration for the well-being of this site. In the past, people have made various suggestions to mitigate "load on the servers", "conserve resources" etc. Such concerns don't apply here. The technology we use on this site can be considered on par with Google or Facebook. Our servers can scale indefinitely, and are able to handle indefinite load - technology resources have never been a constraint on this site. Consider this world a land of plenty. There is no scarcity of anything here.
There are many aspects of this site (and the internet in general) that are very different from that of the non-virtual world. In the non-virtual world, for example, there are the Civil Services exams in our country. There may be a limited 200 seats to fill, and the entire population competes to elbow...
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out others. The top 200 with the best "exam skills" may make it in.
By contrast, on this site, there are no specific "Admin seats to fill". We may have as few as 20 Admins or as many as 2000, depending on their individual intelligence and worthiness. If there are 2000 people who are capable, they may be appointed Admins. If there are none who is worthy enough, then none is appointed. Individual merits count here - people are not competing with each other.
Admins are not appointed with any obligation to contribute. They are recognized as capable and "socially intelligent" individuals who may be empowered and trusted to contribute to this community, as well as to hold up the prestige of this site when they announce themselves as Admins. Our Admins tend to be successful people in the real world, with a busy personal or work life. They are expected to login only when they have leisure to do so. They may or may not be rail fans or have a lot of railway knowledge - they just need to be generally intelligent and socially adept. In fact, this site continuously reminds our members and Admins to logout and give priority to their real life. We do not expect our Admins to be obsessed with this site. This remains a recreational site. All members need to take this site with a limited and healthy dosage.
If members/Admins have not logged in for a long time, it does not take away anything from the individuals who do login on a daily basis and make updates and such. Everyone's history is accumulated and preserved individually. The recent Timeline feature does not show statistics of contributions, but if and when we do show the numbers, all the past history will be displayed. All Admins and members are acting individually, and have the full discretion to do whatever they want. Everyone's contribution is preserved forever here, for the coming generations.
Once again, there is no shortage of room or resources here. However, the Admin group remains an elite society. Admins are emotionally mature and socially aware people. Admins do have a code of conduct to adhere to. They do need to command the respect of our members and visitors. They do need to uphold the prestige of this site and the rest of the Admin group.
So, what is actually NOT allowed of Admins? When would we remove Admins? Admins may be removed if they are consistently not able to live up to the responsibility of making mature decisions. Admins will be removed if they bring down the prestige of the entire group by using foul or uncivilized language. If Admins are not emotionally/socially mature enough to get along with other members or are disruptive, they WILL be removed.
Not contributing enough or not logging in is NOT a criteria for removal.
All worthy, capable and mature individuals are welcome to join the Admin group. In fact, many of our current long-time members are already under consideration for coming into the next batch.
Thanks.