We really do need more people to be active within our community and the only way we can realistically do this is to vote more so they level up and use their privileges.
Some time ago I asked the team for some stats on our Close->Off Topic voting. In the 3 months to June 2012 we cast 3524 OT votes closing 821 questions.
- 11 people voted >100 times casting 1824 votes ~51%
- 11 others voted between 45 and 99 times casting 699 votes ~19%
- 16 others voted between 20 and 45 times casting 505 votes ~ 14%
SF has about 400 people who an cast close votes, less than 40 choose to do so with even minimal regularity and as few as 11 people are doing the bulk of the work.
This really isn't a situation that can be good long term for our site.