Cabal nature of long-term editors and admins

Uh, Admins are not the equivalent of president/MP/mayors. Not even the equivalent of cops. We're just average users with a few more privileges.

I honestly wish there was another way to acknowledge editors who are accepted as "established" or "trustworthy" than making them an Admin. But there isn't, & a lot of people who basically are trusted not to abuse these few privileges are expected to be cops -- only they have no training or even the expectation to be cops. So most Admins don't bother to do any Admin work -- even administrative trivia or protecting pages from obvious vandalism.

The Swedish language Wikipedia appoints administrators for one year at a time. It works great and everybody is happy.

Good for them. That might also make people more willing to serve - although overall, I wish we had far fewer admins on en.wikipedia. The vast majority are behaving like prefects, not janitors.