Removing the species whitelists of players that haven't played for a year or more.

[MccRrib]

This suggestion but extended to include species whitelists. 
To keep it concise, species lore, more than anything else on the server, is constantly changing, a year is more than enough time for drastic changes to occur to a species' lore, be it the retconning of past lore, or the addition of new content. By necessitating a re-application from players that haven't engaged with the server or its community for a year or longer, we can avoid players jumping back into the server at random, and rolling with outdated lore.

 

[Happy_Fox]

I support this even more than I support removing the command whitelists.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

Actual no on this one. If someone is not adhering to the lore, that is a very simple ahelp; whilst someone being incompetent whilst playing command is a much more intricate and potentially subtle issue.

Plus you are not taking away all of my species apps from me just because some people don't read. Because I do. 😕

[sebkillerDK]

Strongly against this, while i see the idea behind this, i think removing all the whitelists is counter productive and might serve to just decrease the population of some of the allready low-pop species.

[Marlon P.]

This is a great idea if you want to whittle down the playercount of these alien species and infuriate people.

Let people prove theyre still capable. Punishing people for the misbehavior of inactivity is arbitrary and can only look conceited from the perspective of the player.

Someone catching up on lore after a haitus isn't the end of the world.

Show us data that this is a problem worthy of this blanket administrative action.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Marlon P.

[niennab]

I don't think there is a need for the species whitelists to be removed due to inactivity. Where command plays a crucial role in a round and can change the enjoyment for players, messing up on a species' lore can be easily rectified in game or via lore developers after the fact. 

[canon35]

I don't support this one for reasons already iterated by previous posts. Command impacts the round directly, bad species players can be handled with a simple ahelp. Plus it is not particularly hard for players to return and reread lore. We have an entire discord to help with that, the lore dev log, and staff too. When I returned to aurora after a year of inactivity I sat down and reviewed the lore pages of the wiki to make sure I would not be inaccurate. It took time, yes, but it was doable. I am sure that returning players won't be as annoying or difficult to handle for species whitelists than Command. 

[Boggle08]

Someone who has been gone for a long time is going to have to play catch up, no matter if they have any whitelists or not.

I could see situations involving people operating with archaic lore so off the mark and disruptive to the point where confrontation or a whitelist strip might be necessary; however, it's a niche enough issue to the point where it could reliably be dealt with on a case by case basis.

We're already starting to see a consistent trend of ancient command characters creeping back into the server with the countenance of deer caught in headlights, but something similar hasn't manifested with old species whitelist holders. I don't think we have to impliment something similar to what's going on in the other thread.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Boggle08

[Kintsugi]

I'd support this for the same reason I support the command whitelist removal. If someone hasn't played in a long time, and that time is measured in years, they're completely out of touch with the community, the lore, the game, etc - and species whitelists rely on good lore knowledge even more than command whitelists do.

[DeadLantern]

Only thing is, messing up command is nowhere near the same thing as messing up as lore. It is an light problem and an easy fix. It seems very draconian to just remove the whitelists of players, and it's incredibly annoying too. To get all those whitelists back, I need to make *6* applications. No thank you.

 

Not exactly sure what this is trying to solve. What is the big deal with people messing up on lore? They'll learn, and if they continue to disrupt things, they can be a helped. No reason to strip the whitelist.

[Scheveningen]

5 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

This is a great idea if you want to whittle down the playercount of these alien species and infuriate people.

I love the delivery of this. So succinct and to the point.

Agreed, unless quality control matters so much more to some folks than actually having players on the server. Nobody wants to have to wait through the bureaucratic week-to-weeks long process it takes to get whitelisted here because of the intensive vetting process.

All of this talk about "being out of touch with the community/lore/game", it is a blatant disguising of words for what is actually wanted: to keep an insular base of players of the exact same people, who may not even be here for the next year. Communities always change and do not hinge on a single group of players to keep it going. It shouldn't, either. Aurora has lasted far too long to be making this mistake.

[Carver]

Despite being a player who doesn't actually ever use his sole whitelist, I'll say the following for the sake of a theoretical:
If my favourite character was of a whitelisted species and on my initial return I find out that not only can I not play that character, but that I have to go through a full multi-day reapplication process to be able to do so (instead of just catching up on some lore summaries over 30-60 minutes before hopping back on), I would simply feel terrible and/or downright discouraged from playing.

[Captain Gecko]

It's probably been already said multiple times, but I'm going to add my part.

For starters I'm not even sure I agree with the Command Whitelist removal... Although I don't see any other kind of policy to do what this aims to do, so to be frank I'm not going to oppose it either. A year is quite a while anyways...

However, as far as species whitelist removal goes? No. Command players, beyond their whitelist, have some responsability as far as playing on station goes. In most cases, disboying a command member is a punishable act for our character, and if the command member in question is giving senseless orders, then the people below will generally (try) to follow. That and remember that the lore doesn't change the same way for each species. A Diona player may not need to constantly look at articles or like a dozen pages of lore on the wiki, while a Tajara player may, so right away this would make this unfair to some species more than others. The main point of interest seems to be lore respect, and as far as species WL goes, it shouldn't be a problem. I've always seen Command WL as a try to get GAMEPLAY permissions, with gaining authority on station and such, while species WL are more LORE-oriented from the get-go; in other words, players with species WL tend to follow more the lore anyways. Finally, we're a generally nice community, we help each other, on the forums on station. Before even getting bwoinked, a player roleplaying a xeno with "outdated" lore will most likely recieve notes and help in LOOC anyways, something much harder to achieve with command members, sometimes (I can easily meet and speak with the lizard botanist, but the Captain himself? That's a bit more complicated).

TL:DR: It's not nescessary, bad/outdated species roleplay only affects one or two players, one of them being the "outdated" player, while a command player with said roleplay can lead to bad consequences upon the entire station. There's no need for such harsh measures on Species WL.

[WhatsUpBrotendo]

I don't think this is necessary, and if someone came back using outdated lore/not roleplaying the species correctly that can easily be handled via ahelp, LOOC, or a simple DM. As others have said this would just have a negative effect on player count.

Re-applying would do more harm than good in my opinion, and I'd much rather have someone DM me or ask questions on the discord after a hiatus (something that's encouraged and is done by returning players) than force them to go through the WL process again.

[Butterrobber202]

Nine out of ten times, returning players refresh themselves on lore before jumping back in. It is far more reasonable to deal with the one rogue player on a case-by-case basis than nuke everyone who hasn't played in awhile.