^ Perhaps we should be prepared for the BEA to go away. Think about it, we used to have multiple moderators, now we only have one. Labor force has been cut back and we should think that this business is going away or perhaps the forum. 
I'm not certain that the moderators were compensated monetarily, but more or less free membership for a certain amount of time vested. If you remember, when the BEA started, everything was free, however, about a year later, most galleries and the story archive was placed behind a membership door of like $15 monthly, which was both rather expensive and unique at the time; pay sites really hadn't gotten far yet. Artists were comped. The user gallery and the forum were free, however, to maintain their membership, most artists stopped posting in the user gallery and posted their work behind closed doors. I remember arguing at the time that it would be better to seek advertisers than to hide incentives to visit behind doors; what incentives does one see? The rationale was that a server was expensive, like $10k at that time, however, that no longer applies to today; you don't need your own server and space is cheap; let's face it, for no cost at all, you could create your own web pages on a number of platforms just a few years after the BEA started. Things changed quickly.
Salem has been a moderator for quite some time and unlike the other mods, is a prolific poster and data keeper. He was not the keeper of the rules and the guardian of the peace like the others, but now he is saddled with all the responsibility. While there are a few fairly active members in the forum, not everyone is suited for the position of moderator IMHO, and I would suggest that obviously, those suited, have not volunteered. If your interests are more focused, while the time necessary to monitor what is being said across the 25 or so threads active on a given day is not excessive, it becomes a matter of why would you? At times, some of us, including myself, have reminded people not to post OF material and such, but I try to do it in a polite way, and this is probably only on the Beshine thread; there is a difference between telling someone they shouldn't versus can't. Obviously, some do not understand this; they should not be moderators.