Genuinely, I have to wonder why you think that coalies (people who are obsessed enough about a fanfic exchange to spend months and months gossiping about it) are not largely the same people who spend time in other exchange spaces and see how modding decisions are actually made. You make it sound like mods hand out flyers at MIT career fairs to get co-mods and tag mods, rather than just posting "Hey, does anyone want to help with this?" in EAD.