It's a shame the community doesn't have an official award event to honor these unsung heroes who keep these places running. Not everything is about money, and some people actually enjoy being recognized for the little things they do publicly. Or am I mistaken in thinking that the icopress community award is the official one? Mprep, Mr Big, hilariousandco, and you, your work is underappreciated because voters are only interested in those who have given them a lot of merit and those who have a lot of merit to buy favors. It's a forum where the merit sources outnumber popular than the administrators.
I don't mean to single out Mr Big or anyone there, it was just an example since that's what I see. Although, I also thought that a lot of the user base might not even be that familiar with them since they're generally on the quieter side of things. Maybe, not so much in the local section I haven't checked. I get the impression all moderators put a shift in, but we do get some reward, theymos makes sure of that which we all appreciate.
However, that's just an example I thought it would be the easiest to make. There's a ton of users out there that dedicate their time to helping new users, the merit sources that I mentioned. It's a shame that some of the best users out there, aren't popular simply because they're dedicating their time to the above examples, instead of engaging as much as the popular choices.
If theymos do not organize an official award for the people on the backend, we will have this conversation again in 2023 and probably 2030 if the forum is still running smoothly ( or at least give us yearly stats). We can't help but vote for the popular ones who are also helping in some way when we're posting and having fun. We have a category for the best spamburster, but the top three nominees so far can't even boast of 500-1000 successful reports, but I'm sure there are a few unpopular ones with 10k+ reports who aren't getting voted for.