After few thoughts on the subject, I agree with you Croft. Restricting will spoil the fun of some players. My previous post was crap. After all, there is no reason to think that everybody would love to be part of an official faction, and there is no reason to sanction those players.
But it blocks any other possible thoughts on the matter as well. At least for me, I can't think of something more for the officials that is already implemented on the server.
So yes, beeing officials requiers more work and this sometimes is painfull. But at the same time, all the politics, drama, skypelancing, forumlancing is, to me, what is the best part of beeing officials. It is like a second game, or an other aspect of it, that independant players often do not even know the existence. Maybe a good way to make faction more desirable for indies, is actually to promote the use of this forum. Beeing in an official faction is beeing in the core group of players of this game. And for me it's priceless, as I really like this community.
I don't think we can make official factions more desirable than what they already are. The only thing I can tell to an independant player as to why he should join one is that he will meet a lot of nice people, from all over the world, and that he will never really feel to be alone on the server. It promotes cooperation between players, projects and group flights etc...
Once you are in an official faction, it is pretty hard not to be in one anymore. So maybe it all depends on us, the officials, to invite as much indies as we can, so our group gets bigger and so this game will not cease to be.