As much as people want to think it, there is not a lack of effort on the part of the staff to work to fix the short comings in the heroimm process. One of the biggest complaints made by people is they don't want to actually do the tasks, they just want to dive in and do the "fun" part of interactions....

Guess what, you can do that as a mortal. The difference comes in that you can't give out rewards to other people as a fellow mort. That begs the question is the interaction what people want or is it just to be rewarded?

Re: heroimms who have faded away...
I am not sure how many have left from the start, I know a handful have faded while I have been involved in the process. My mentality is that if someone cannot be bothered to invest the time to do what has become an almost trivially simple project then they probably won't be bothered to invest the time into actually doing their part as an admin on the mud.

As with most things that are an enjoyable hobby, when it stops being fun people stop doing it. At a certain point the entire process of trying to be an admin/dungeon master/whatever other title you guys wants to slap on the staff of CF starts to shift it completely away from enjoyable. And it gets real tricky to get people to volunteer their free time to be miserable.