@Honder 1- What year did the server start, and who were the original 5 members (do all of them still play?)?

It was created October 10th 2014, it went live on MCSL on October 13th 2014.

@Honder 2- What's the biggest challenge the server has had from a management standpoint?

I think the biggest challenge is the fact we are vanilla, this makes all simple tasks much harder. For BuyCraft, you just need to add their plugin, for vanilla, I had to code my own program to interface with their API. Cheat detection is very hard with vanilla and so is all other aspects like TPA and homes.

@Honder 3- Who is responsible for the super dope spawn!?

We all had a hand in spawn. Quite a bit of it was me like the tower, dragon head, furnace, elytra, enchanting table and paths. The structure of the trading post was Nysic, the boats and sub were various players.

@Honder 4- Has the server always been plug-in free?

Yes, I had plugin servers before this but from day one we were vanilla.

@Honder 5- If you could put any neat tips here, such as most toxic player ever on the server, farthest anybody has ever made it, biggest base, biggest raid, etc. this would be the spot to do it!

I think others can answer this, biggest base has to be sknup. We have had a few players that were hard to get rid of. There's also quite a bit on my AMA.