BeeStation All Grown Up™

So, this is a topic that has come up quite a few times… Especially during our discussions on community policies and how we handle certain topics. Should BeeStation have a minimum age requirement? That is the question. A question that has been seen and asked several times unofficially. After several long discussions with staff, we believe it might finally be time to properly answer this question.

Some key notes with this possible change

  1. Our minimum age requirement will be 18.
  2. We will not become an ERP community
  3. We will not be imposing strict ID/age checking requirements. Rather, we’ll be operating similarly to other SS13 projects, like TG.
  4. This change would be so we can loosen up on punishment against certain things done for the sake of humor/discussion, not so people can go out of their way to make others uncomfortable.
  5. Erotica will continue to be disallowed
  6. Our current stance towards inclusivity will remain unchanged

Since this is a decision that will heavily impact the community, we have decided to open up an in-game poll for everyone to vote on. We will be doing a game poll over a forum one so that we can impose a playtime requirement on the poll itself. Individuals with fewer than 24-hours of playtime will be disallowed from voting. Voting will be open for 3-days (we may extend this if we don’t feel like we’ve gotten enough responses)


This thread will be kept open for general discussion and for Q&A.

4 Likes

FAQ

Q. If we went 18+ does that mean I can say <slur-here>
A. No. Go play somewhere else.

Q. What will the minimum age be?
A. 18

Q. How far is it going to be loosened up? How are we meant to know what jokes / what will be allowed and what could be decided by an admin as not allowed?
A. Complicated questions without amazing answers. It has and will continue to fall under admin discretion to an extent. However, currently, our policy is to ban anything that might not be suitable for minors. Treating everyone like adults means that we don’t have to go that far anymore and can be a little more relaxed when handing out punishments (we currently jump to perma for most infractions)

Q. When is this expected to come into effect?
A. The poll is set to last for the full weekend. We’ll announce the final results after that.

2 Likes

Will we be allowed to say the L word?

Honestly depends on the age limit for me, but either way people are just going to lie if they’re under the limit.

Ehem… I guess I need to redirect you to number 5.

Minimum age requirement will be 18.

How far is it going to be loosened up? How are we meant to know what jokes / what will be allowed and what could be decided by an admin as not allowed? Its pretty simple when its absolutely nothing is allowed, but when its some stuff is allowed for jokes and what not but we aren’t going to tell you what is and what isn’t its confusing.

Also will you be banning people that admitted they are under 18 in the past?

How will you verify that people are over 18 / how are these bans going to be appealed? (If we are doing the other server stuff of requiring someone to send their ID to get unbanned then that is just disturbing, even more so than any of the ERP stuff)

I only play bee, how do the other servers deal with it?

That doesn’t say anything.

Sad :crying_cat_face:

The third step to becoming an erp server is bargaining. We are close to the end

69208

Atleast now I can go tell science to suck my nuts and bolts when they wont upgrade me

10 Likes

I completely agree with this here. How are we or the admins going to know what is a joke and what is too far. Where exactly do we draw the line?
What i am afraid of is different admins having different views on what is toeing the line and what is okay thus leading to even more confusion and inconsistency in rule enforcement. And to be perfectly honest it is not possible to get special rules for every different case.

Can we implement this for mental age too? TG has a physical age requirement, but the lack of mental age requirement ends up with them having a lot of people running around nyaing everwhere. I really don’t want them kinds of people to be exposed to the horrors of space.

2 Likes

Complicated questions without amazing answers. It has and will continue to fall under admin discretion to an extent. However, currently, our policy is to ban anything that might not be suitable for minors. Treating everyone like adults means that we don’t have to go that far anymore and can be a little more relaxed when handing out punishments (we currently jump to perma for most infractions)

If we know for certain that someone is under 18, they will have to be removed. Yes.

Similar to how any other adult service does it. We inform users that they need to be 18 and that by joining the community they acknowledge this fact. We operate with a good faith belief that people are being honest. If someone is known or verifiably found out to be underage, then they will be banned until they are at least 18.

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How would we even check this?

Good thing we have smite buttons

1 Like