Regarding the retirement of these contacts, I am listing here the reasoning regarding disallowing ex-PC contacts.
Firstly, the rule was not implemented by me, and the contacts affected should have been retired at the time it was implemented.
Secondly, allowing grandfathered exceptions can alienate newer members of the community, who see that there are ex-PC contacts, but their ex-PC isn't allowed to be one.
Thirdly, allowing for ex-PC contacts puts a dangerous amount of emotional investment into those contacts, causing situations like what's happened today.
Finally, the control of a NET Contact should lie with the community as a whole. If they need changed, we should be able to do that. It is significantly harder to do that with ex-PC contacts, because of the high pressure to remain true to their origins.
Ultimately, these convinced me to disallow any ex-PC contacts, as well as retiring the existing ones. If an extremely good argument can be made against this, I will reverse this decision. However, unless an argument can be made to abolish the "no ex-PC rule", my decision will stand