When we know that an immortal is inactive, we do take them off the list of active imms. We close the religion, take them off the wizlist, etc. The problems is that there is often a grey period where the immortal seems to be active, logs on reasonably often, but just isn't pulling their fair share of the load. It impacts other immortals in regards to our non-empowerment duties, too.

Drawing a line in that sand is extremely difficult. Players not getting empowered have a difficult time knowing if they just didn't catch the immortal online, didn't have close enough to a "right" angle on the empowerment to warrant a talking to, or just didn't even realize the immortal was trying to talk to them. Going by how many players a given immortal has empowered lately is no good judge of how active they are, either - some spheres are more popular than others and some are easier to develop an empowerment role around.

And if the immortal isn't logging on and isn't answering their emails... it's a bit of a challenge to get a dialog going about what's really going on. And considering that we're all volunteers, it is a delicate balance between luring someone back into playing that immortal we all love and/or hate and driving someone off by reacting too strongly to a week or two's vacation combined with some less active playing.