Personally, I think that power struggles are good for RP. Having characters be invested in something for once and have their world tugged at a little can only be a good thing. Throw them an interesting situation to think about and see what they feel about it, it's good roleplay. We had a discussion thread recently about the way Yamatai has some things unwritten that should probably be written. Part of SARP is exploring what it means to be a futuristic society and military, but no society is homogenous, especially when you're talking about 48 billion people (or insert current number here) and a dozen separate cultures inside just Yamatai.
Having things remain in a state where a jigsaw piece or two is missing leaves a bad taste in the mouth, I think. That's been one of the main reasons behind the half dozen or so reforms/updates I've done for various parts of the SAOY (SARA, SAMP, SASO, Rangers, Kamirakurai, etc). Every one fills a gap I saw and Wes didn't mind me correcting. In a future military, there are some things that once you think about it for a moment probably should exist, otherwise you have gaps in capability that the SAOY wouldn't have realistically overlooked.
In terms of OOC power struggles, that assumes that people actually care about control or being the best or whatever. I know I certainly don't. It's just the case that I've consistently put the effort into doing improvements to unmanaged military corps and organisations, often creating several new subarticles, which then effectively makes me the manager for that thing as people come to me for questions about it. It's not some kind of power grab, it's just that the unmanaged and old things tend to need the most love, rather than the ones people have maintained being active managers of.
We're all here to make or facilitate RP. Personally I take joy in making something exciting like SASO or Rangers, then seeing people like Glein be inspired to run a Ranger plotship. I like seeing multiple people take an interest in trying to run a TANTO plot, message me about JPing special training, managing CSAR, becoming a fighter Ace, running experiments with SARA, or like a JP I'm currently in, help form the Kamirakurai. It's all original RP and the fruits of an experiment filling in some jigsaw pieces, that has proved good so far. How you quantify my RP personally, of whether SASO or SARA for example, can be qualified as a plot in of itself, is up to you. But I do RP them, and people do RP with them, probably a lot more than most settings elements.
The issue comes when people assume that SARP is a kind of time capsule where things were one way and should always be one way. We had a chat in Discord a few days ago about this kind of thing. There's some old hats here who believe that SARP should be a static place, or try to strip away things that have happened due to fixing common sense issues, for the sake of returning to a less common sense past. Unfortunately, that's not how any work in progress operates. If someone wants to explore or update something, there has to be a real reason that you've raised beforehand as to why things should remain in the past way. Oftentimes, new things inspire new RP that may have never been seen before. Exciting, for a place as venerable as SARP. Without something like Rangers or SASO, a lot of active PCs would have a lot less flavour in their lives, I think.
So, rather than assuming things are one way and not talking to anybody about things that may have changed, talk! Ask questions! Everyone is around and a lot of the people who've stayed active for the past couple of years can answer most questions to some degree. Otherwise you run the risk of bumping into inconsistencies that can be, as others have said, jarring.
For example, SASO was made to give people a single point of contact for a lot of the non-plotship combat/training side of SARP. It makes things easier for newer players and older players alike. Part of that was simplifying down disparate parts of the Special Forces, such as how SAINT had half a dozen special forces that effectively were all the same as a SOFT team just with different cool names. Curio Squad being an exception to that rule. None of them were actually played and nobody seemed to mind their reorganisation until recently. However, there's been a year IC following SASO of admirals trusting other admirals and SAINT is no longer as spooky and an uncanny iceberg as it once was. Because, kind of obviously, people who are Taishos and Chujos generally have enough trust from Yui to have knowledge of most things. That's probably a good thing, because realistically why would it be any different?
All the things I've done, I've run by Wes first as FM and SM. There are some things I know he's not overly fond of and I'm glad he's made me aware of those, but as he told me recently, if people want to see something new and it builds RP..
I don't mind setting aside a bunch of the things I've made if people are getting weirded out by me being the manager of a lot of things. However, it'd be a dereliction if I tossed them to the winds of being unmanaged so they can eventually wither up and be forgotten. So if anyone would like to put their hand up to take the responsibility of actively managing and improving something like SAMP, SARA, Reconnaissance, or any of the dozen or so MOS inside SASO please put your hands up in this thread. I've already happily been helping CSAR get its own manager and been splitting off a lot of SASO's stuff to Rikugun and local Fleets. Just let me know. I'd actually like to see more people take an interest in building the SAOY up rather than putting glass around it and mounting it on a wall, heh.