So are we all clear that when you advertise membership is "open", but not to everyone, your membership is actually "restricted" and should be chosen next time the option rolls around?

OK. Time to move on.

We are clear that that is how it works now, yes. We are also clear that there are options available that can improve this system, including at least one option (probationary members) that was suggested even before this update.

Only to beat this dead horse further into the ground will I note that the best option available to improve this system is to not select open. You can't have probationary members in open enrollment. It ceases to be open. For legions that don't want to concern themselves with discretion, select open. No other modification is needed.

Perhaps you're taking the feature name "open" a little too literally? It can easily be renamed to recruitment methods "Manual" and "Automatic" instead of "Restricted" and "Open". Manual being the traditional way of letting someone in, and Automatic being what Ferrus is suggesting, letting them in but having a probationary.

Even a store that's "open" isn't nearly as "open" as the "open" recruitment feature; an "open" store doesn't just let you run in, tear some #&$# up, shoot the cashier, shout profanity at the customers and mock the manager, steal a bunch of things and let you run off without the cops chasing you down en masse. Wheras in an "open" legion you're free to do whatever the hell you please and get away with it no problem. So really it needs tweaking.

Ah, I see the issue, you're confused about the word "open". In this case, it refers specifically to being able to join without an Officer/Leader accepting you. Even as a probationary member, as long as that fact holds true the recruitment is still "open". This is to help smaller Legions with fewer active people; I know in my old Legion, when we started back near the start of the old Legion system, we had the problem of many people trying to join when none of the few of us were online, and being able to have people join without any of us online would've been very handy.

Anyway, a Legion could have open recruitment even if the new members are probationary, and even closed Legions could use this feature as a precaution (which is where the idea originally came from, quite some time ago).

Way too long for me to read. Open means what we know it to mean when you hover over the little question mark next to the word on the recruit page.

And I quote:

All eligible members who wish to join will be auto-accepted. No way this can be confusing. If you don't want that, don't choose it. Period.

Correct. And if the option was added for new members to start as Probationary rather than Member that would still be the case. Thus, you still have made no valid points against that suggestion.

Way to go. Anyway, I'll step out of this argument.

Er. Mah. Gerd. At some point you will realize that this was created to lift acceptance restrictions on small legions who don't have leaders or officers on enough to get new members in the door when they apply while giving everyone a rotation of days in the sun at the top of the list.

"Open" explicitly states to the outside world that you accept anyone at any time without restriction. Creating a formal probation period creates restrictions.

If you want to put people on a probation, do it yourself.

Holy $%&% #&$#! I didn't even think of that! When someone joins, just hack the game so they can't hit alerts or take planets until you're sure they're not trying to take advantage of your Legion! Dear god! Holy hell! Manually restrict them from these things! Man, I wish I had thought of that, so I could avoid sounding like a complete jackass.

That was sarcasm. Obviously what you just said is so incredibly stupid that I'm beginning to doubt you even play the game.

Open explicitly states, and I quote:
All eligible members who wish to join will be auto-accepted.

I don't know if you didn't see that or what, but clearly it in no way explicitly states that you will have full privileges when you join; and even if it did now, it could be changed to only say that people will be auto-accepted when they join (which is what it actually says).

Please, please, stop. I can't take any more of your incredible stupidity. Nothing about Probationary members, as I've set them forth, contradict anything at all about what Open Recruitment says. Please, please try to understand these words. I don't know if you don't understand english well, or if you have no grasp at all of basic logic and inference, but please, just stop. Please.

Please. Seriously, for $%&% sake, I can't believe this #&$#. Please, tell me you're trolling or something. I just can't believe this.

Fixed that for you, in case you weren't aware of the rules of that language.

I thought about it for a moment, but my mind was so broken by the fact that you at the same time quoted the Open recruitment tooltip and implied that it said anything at all about the privileges granted to a player joining under such recruitment (and, in fact, pretended that was even relevant to changes that could be made in the future) that I lacked the willpower to correct it. I almost couldn't bring myself to look at this thread again, but fortunately for me you fell back to an argument significantly less foolish than the one you previously pursued.

I gotta go with Sig on this. To add a "Proby" rank which requires manual promotion by an Officer to gain "normal" access to legion privileges in order to "fix" the Open recruitment just sounds counterproductive to me. "Hey! You can join our legion but can't do anything until an Officer checks you out and promotes you!" as opposed to "Hey! You can join our legion with normal member privileges after an Officer checks you out and lets you in!" I'm sorry, but if I were to join a legion and not be able to do anything like hit shared NPCs or send comm messages or check the quality of the base, I doubt very much that I would be staying very long.

Your point isn't hard to comprehend. You aren't putting anything out there that's really deep. You want to put everyone who joins a legion in GL on probation, the terms of which you likely haven't given the least bit of thought to and I don't want.

Life has been just fine without it to this point, and it's only coming up now because some legions were foolish enough to willingly let people in without review, just like the tool tip said would happen.

You are a solution looking for a problem. Please get off your high horse and realize you're no smarter than anyone else here, especially me, and understand that creating a new class of member is not only inconvenient, but unnecessary.

I'm sure you've figured out what to do when people wait until probation is over to misbehave, but save that for another night. Your ego is blocking my view of the screen now, so let's pick this up another time.

You're not exactly the target audience though; this was almost certainly implemented in order to help out much smaller Legions who might be accepting members so new they don't even know about Elites or even planet alerts. The difference between this and regular recruiting is that one of the few current members won't come online, find a bunch of new member requests, only to realize all those people have gone on to other Legions already.

Considering the fact that everyone has agreed anyone using Open recruitment is a dumbass who doesn't deserve to have new members, I can't imagine this being a step backwards (unless you're suggesting anyone who uses this deserves to be literally kicked out of the game). So anyway, Dan could not add Proby rank, and thus the open recruitment becomes a complete and total waste, or he can add this and give an option where at least a few members might stay to be promoted to Members.

People have brought this up before, as I didn't come up with the Probationary member idea.

Yes, obviously people can wait longer to cause problems, but this will keep them from going around to every open Legion causing a lot of problems immediately. I've heard of people staying in Legions in EVE (I don't think they're called Legions, but they have some sort of groups) for years in order to steal everything; there's really no way to work around that. However, that doesn't mean we should simply abandon all hope of stopping any problems at all, and this would take care of the majority of them. Right now, you don't really need any sort of dedication, you can simply pop in and out, at least with Proby rank you can stop every single passerby from causing problems.

Before this spirals all the way down, we agree we don't want people interfering with the normal operation of a legion. I put the onus on the legion to police themselves as I see the harm of a probation outweighing the good. You see it the other way. Ok.

On the perma ban idea, how about making it so the auto approval is just not available for those ships? Regardless if the recruiting is set to open or not, have those ships that are so flagged go through the accept process manually?
And most of those suggestions are pretty benign.. they just keep people from abusing the nicety. If you can't get tactical information until you are loyal, you reduce the impact of people hopping around just to spy. Spying wasn't the purpose to the open recruiting option. Neither is it meant to allow folks to hop into your legion to recruit.
It wasn't meant to be a double edged sword.. something painful or hateful.. it was meant as a courteous recruiting tool.
People sure do get dismissive to these suggestions as if their opinion mattered more than the next guys.. post your concerns and let it lay.. if you don't like it state why.. suggestions are just that..