I'm jumping in a bit late here, but here's a couple cents...
Tom is absolutely correct... there's a lot more to being an admin than cruising the forums behavior-checking the members. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, most of which has absolutely nothing to do with the forums. The forums are pretty much a secondary priority.
For those who don't know, I'm an admin on AR, but not on AB. It's a lot of work, and the forums there don't have nearly the membership, nor the issues that AB has. I still have spent most of my time online attending to administrative responsibilities since I've been an admin. I don't have time to joke around, or spam, or even maintain my art gallery here on AB like I used to because of those responsibilities. It's incredibly stressful, and I think most members think all that admins do is cruise the forums looking to hand out warnings and bans, and close topics.
What admins
actually do is keep the main site running so that the members will still have a community in which to kvetch about administrative actions. They try to do their best to keep the potential conflicts down so that the
majority of the active members feel comfortable.
If a few topics are moved around or closed to make the administrative duties of the forum a bit less chaotic, or to prevent a potential conflict or stop an actual one, then what's really the problem? Don't worry, you'll still be able to post your spam, or debate with each other, you'll just have to deal with concentrating it in one topic rather than in multiple topics. No biggie. Move on
