Eliot Clef

From my point of view, there is no "most people" in these threads about changing voting mechanisms. There is a very vocal minority group that gets sick of its least favorite round type being voted in occasionally and throws suggestions at the forums in the hopes of introducing a voting system that favors their preferred round types and/or axes out their least favorite round type. I am not saying this is specifically you, but rather, that this is a trend I've noticed. For this reason, I honestly don't think the voting mechanism should be on the table as something the community can have tweaked by voting on it or throwing enough suggestion posts at the board. We usually get something reasonably agreeable to plenty of people, and occasionally a voting surge happens for whatever reason and something less-than-popular slips through. It's not a bad thing, and people need to just let it go.

On this basis alone, no, I don't think we need this to be canonized. It doesn't add anything useful, entertaining, or interesting to the setting. It is there to justify a family fortune and doesn't really display a lot of awareness with regards to what the subject matter (Synthetic creation) actually involves. It tries to put forward cutting edge technology without actually explaining why the technology is new / cutting edge or for that matter why such a small group would have the ability to produce such things.

Valorallen Vitellia is one of the better HoP / Captains I've seen. I can't see anything but good coming from whitelisting him for IPCs, and I look forward to seeing his robits in action. The only drawback is that we'll see less of his other excellent characters. +1

Ok, so let's talk about Mark Syion a little. When Mark Syion first showed up in the security department, he had records riddled with redactions and security clearances that don't exist in-setting, bragged a lot about them, and refused to wear the security uniform until repeatedly badgered. (Note: The security uniform is actually lightly armored, so there is a practical reason this is enforced.) So, your first impression, although it has since been amended, was really really negative. After these things were corrected, he still talked about Syion Incorporated, how he was rich and just doing this as a hobby, etc. On top of that, he's not really viewed as a competent officer, or wasn't last time I was playing regularly. Bear in mind that Aurora's security regulars are heavily composed of people with relatively poor employment opportunities with a fairly large population of Unathi, Tajaran, and IPCs. People hate Mark Syion because he didn't fall into line with basic regs during his introductory phase, is below the competence level they expect out of a security officer (at least among security regulars), doesn't need to be doing this job to begin with (or so he claims), and generally has presented himself as special / superior to his peers with the rich angle being only one part of it. It's not just because he's rich.

If your characters have their own company and are rich for it, why would they even be working for NT? Why would NT even hire someone who owns a rival company? On the occasion that it's come up ICly, he's stated that he works pretty much as a hobby. People tend to not like him very much when it comes up.

The reason behind this person's ban was having exceedingly improper characters, and a condition for unbanning was (if I'm not mistaken) to come up with a reasonable character to show to staff. While maybe records aren't the necessary way to convey this, it is one applicable way to do so, and the primary vehicle through which this disciplinary action / response exchange has been conveyed.

In summary: No, thanks. More broadly: I don't really have a problem with this as an optional law set that is locked away in the "dangerous" lawsets section and basically never used, but the imposition this places on lawbound Synthetic players is simply too high. A part of the reason the Asimov lawset stopped being used on most servers is the exploitative manner in which the lawset can be used against the AI and synthetics. As things are, the corporate lawset allows the players to interpret things reasonably and not have to bend over backwards for assholes who are trying to get the AI to comply with them under threat of hurting themselves or whatever. The "Inaction" law in particular is unconditionally terrible to try to play. As things are, Synthetics are allowed to interpret hierarchy to avoid being forced to do harmful things, make judgement calls on potential harmful actions, and can be "people". This lawset not only closes off those opportunities but forces lawbound synthetics to obey unreasonable demands and interfere with the crew in the event that they are engaging in lawful, legitimate behavior that violates their law set such as apprehension / incarceration of criminals, etc. "May not harm, or through inaction", and "must obey orders, unless that conflicts with the First Law" narrows potential interpretation of acceptable behavior considerably and heavily favors antagonists in many fairly ordinary situations. (Such as security synthetics making arrests.) On the "AI could abuse this side of things", the critical failure of these laws lies in the inaction clause of law 1, where the AI and Synthetics could begin acting extremely unhelpfully to avert the potential of harm. In all, there's a reason Asimov's laws aren't used, and also why a modified version of them isn't really any better.

Sleepy is a person that I've seen come an awful long way on Aurora. She's had some bumpy times, but my impression is that she's learned along the way. While I think it's reasonable to be wary of her being whitelisted for IPCs, I think it's better to err on the side of giving her a chance to prove herself than it is to turn her away. I think Sleepy has changed, and is sincerely committed to improvement as a roleplayer. So I'm going to +1 this.

I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but I've been hanging around this guy intermittently for a little while and he's pretty cool. I think he can handle Head roles just fine. +1

My interactions have primarily been with Ziva and Katana, both of whom are very entertaining. I don't really have any negative input to offer, and because my general impression if overwhelmingly positive, it's hard for me to offer anything specific. (Also man guys, why'd you veer so far off topic?)

Vyleon Black has been around on Aurora for a good long time, and he's pretty good candy. The only negative thing I can say about him is some forum shenanigans that honestly aren't relevant to this, and a habit of disabling the Psych Office camera routinely. +1 from me.

I recommended that Boopers submit an IPC Whitelist application after seeing 'em in action for quite some time. They are a good robit, and this application is pretty solid. Beep boop +1.

Actually I think there are a lot of people who would be elated if everybody but Humans and Skrell were banned. The IC racism tends to correlate to people OOCly thinking a whitelisted race is shitty. I'm sure there are some who would like Skrell banned as well. Disclaimer: I'm not one of these people. It's why I think democratic votes on the rights of whitelisted races and what they should be able to do jobwise should generally be ignored.

I'm not sure I'd call Vaurca biting common, but it's not uncommon either. It seems to be most common among drones who have carte blanche to react mindlessly.

Apologies, I'm not disputing the other charges listed, I'm trying to get clarification on specific charges involved. Hokay. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I'll make a separate thread for this when I get home.