You at least got attention and the possibility of bumping it up to a “more serious” vote.
Good work, Keep it up! 
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I’ll be a lot more tempered here than I was in Discord. But, to be short (this doesn’t last), it really doesn’t say anything. The forums have always been heavily biased towards certain issues and they haven’t often been reflective of the rest of the community.
To add, while the numbers seem fairly high, in comparison with actual server player counts it’s only a small portion of the people who regularly play. We’ve had about 1,000 unique players join the server in the last ~7-days (~600 in the last three). A not insignificant number of people in this poll were missing from that count (or haven’t even connected in months).
Finally, the people who vote on these threads are going to be the heavily opinionated ones who are already negatively biased. People who don’t care or who are happy/content with the current rules will not go out of their way to make their voices heard. All of the promotion for this poll, that I’ve personally seen, has been targeted towards people venting about the rule or just being generally frustrated. Which not only weights the poll further, but it reinforces a desired bias.
These are the reasons why I’ve generally been seen to be somewhat negative towards these types of polls. They’re incredibly difficult to actually do correctly and more-often-than-not they’re coming from a place of emotion which has a tendency to taint the results.
tl;dr The poll isn’t very reflective of actual player opinions and I would much rather have (proper) discussion threads where people remain civil and give their feedback or suggestions. Those tend to be a lot more valuable than these polls will ever be.
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Will an in-game vote be considered then? I would actually want to see that data.
It’s been a consideration since we hinted at gathering data. But, don’t expect it soon. Gathering opinions/data immediately after a controversy or when emotions are at their highest invalidates a lot of that data.
So, I’ll say that it’s not out of the cards, but I wont say when to expect it.
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Very well. I will like to say that this post and my own post were civil on this topic. Not all of them the forum posts have been civil of course but I just wanted to point that out since I rather it be a civil discussion too.
My post on this in case it was missed
Granted opinions on fourms can differ to people actively playing on Bee right now slightly, so a couple of polls would be appereicated. Even if those votes results don’t lead to anything, data is data. 
Apologies, my comment about staying civil wasn’t directed towards you specifically. It was more of an open statement.
Misleading data tends to be pretty harmful. Especially when people use it to try and crusade a given agenda. I wont stop anyone from trying to collect their own data, but I think it’s fair for me to warn people that they should heavily temper their expectations.
Despite the common meme, we’re not out to make the experience worse for anyone. It’s important to remember that this project consists of more than just a handful of people and we want it to continue to grow and develop.
We often have to think about things at a larger scale and I can understand if that doesn’t always translate well to more high-profile cases like this. We genuinely do try our best to act with our players’ best interests in mind, but change is slow and we often have to be fairly methodical in how we approach issues. Especially ones born out of outrage or upset. Just because it doesn’t look like anything is happening, doesn’t always mean that’s actually the case.
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Don’t believe him, it’s a lie!
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ruko never willingly resigned from the admin team, he was being silenced for revealing crossed secret agenda all along
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I don’t have skin in this, but there is definitely something to be said that naming conventions need to exist because of the following example:
Lizards with human names
That shit is fucking lame and low effort. At that point you’re playing a human with a different appearance, and its incredibly low effort.
Lizard with a moth name? And they act kinda like a moth would? Cool as shit. Huge effort, plenty of interesting stuff contained in there for backstory and character development.
Reducing naming conventions just means an influx of uncontrolled low effort characters, and this “RP environment” many of you hold dear is going to come undone sooner or later as it incentives less and less effort into character creation.
Be careful what you all wish for.
Edit:Unclear sentence
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I thought I was the only non-staff member who believed this.
Seeing plain-ass human names on random species is by far the thing that bothers me the most about bad names.
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While I cant really say that I’ve personally noticed a trend of anything like that… I do concede the point that generic human names could become prevalent on non humans. Especially those who use the policy as an excuse to keep their names while changing race (Unless they really put effort and have it come about as IC consequences)
Human names are a really touchy subject that I kinda don’t know what to do with…
There has to be a line drawn somewhere, people just don’t seem to be happy with where it is now…
Strict and to the letter. Even minor deviation or following the spirit of the rule but not the letter can still get you slapped.
And with how resistant even you were to additions back then and even generally now, it’s not surprising that the frustrations grew.
I swear there was a post floating around with a contribution list for additions to the guidelines but I cant seem to find it… Would love to throw more at it
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Going to try to explain why I think at least relatively strict naming conventions are good and why I like seeing them. In a word: Lore.
Beestation doesn’t have much, but I like when people making characters respect what is actually there - I want someone who built a character within the universe we have established and are playing in, not someone who built a character specific only to their own whimsical imagination. I want to see aliens that follow a generally shared culture - not homogenous but also not every other one being a stand-out that doesn’t fit in with their own culture at all.
You have read my primary point, nothing beyond this point is probably worth reading to the average person. It is late and the rest of this post is probably going to be a bit more of a ramble than an organized part of my point.
Why are moths latin when latin is a human derived language IRL? It’s meant as a parallel. Making an actual alien culture and language is possible, but it’s much easier to borrow or take inspiration from an existing culture or mixture of cultures to define an alien species. What comes to mind if I ask you to think of a typical dwarven accent? I’ll bet what came to mind was a mixture of Scottish and Irish despite those being actual dialects too.
There isn’t much in the way of lore on Bee, but one thing all species do have is naming conventions. It is not obscenely restrictive to your ability to RP for you to be asked to name your character appropriately to the given lore. Yes it is absolutely annoying to be told to change a name later, but this can be avoided by simply following the rules from the start instead of hoping not to be noticed.
Good characters do not need a special name to set them apart from others - they stand out because they are good characters. Taylor the QM is a boring human and one of the more memorable faces on the station, for example. You can also still give plenty of meaning to a character name while following the outlined naming formats too.
I’ll close out this rambling with some questions from a DM perspective:
When you’re making a new character in an established setting with other people, do you go along with what the universe and conventions already existing in their universe, or do you insist on re-writing what is already written? (This isn’t to say there aren’t room for improvements, but simply improving the restrictions isn’t what is being proposed or requested)
When you’re choosing a species for your character, is it because of how they look, their mechanical advantages, or because you want to RP someone from an alien race with a unique culture? (This is especially targetted at Jane the lizard and Steve the moth).
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What if you made it an RP gimmick that your character is whatever the species equivalent of a Weeaboo would be. Like, a moth wanting to be human would never speak moffic, want their wings removed, eat meat even if if made them puke, ask questions about what a human would feel in certain situations.
I play a character with that sort of gimmick. It allows you to play out those differences in culture and speices with others and how it can effect your character. Though I follow the guildelines for their name it does mean that their sort of stuck in a loop since they can never progress to having a human-like name.
The problem is that putting all these regulations doesn’t encourage roleplaying at all, in fact I feel it dampers it since it forces players to make characters one way.
I agree with this but I do believe that someone’s name is a big part of their character. If Taylor had to change his name would he still be Taylor anymore?
The only other than their appearance (which on SS13 isn’t saying much) the only thing that establishing a character is their name. Rob that from someone and that character loses a part of their identity.
Lore would be nice, but I don’t believe lore should be something that is forced down people’s thoats either.
Lore should be dressing anyways, something that RPers can take pieces of to work on how their character fits into the universe and not treated like it’s the bible.
This would be a different if Beestation was a super RP forced server with a extended lore but neither those things are true and let’s face it, it never will be.
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Better examples for this would be:
Cordswitch Bos → Cordswitch
Kerlin Lunae Lumen → Kalavi Lumen
Fitz ‘Dave’ Sholl II → Fitz Sholl or Dave Sholl
The First and last, yes I absolutely would still treat them like the same person because the names have barely changed. The middle one, no the name changed pretty dramatically instead of just being trimmed. Lunae Lumen would have still be recognizable as the same person (and also been pretty thematically a “John Smith” among moth names, since it essentially means “Moonlight”)
Cordswitch Bos didn’t change their name to just Cordswitch. In fact the last time I seen them on Bee they went back to being an IPC named CBOS (a name that he choiced himself over something that was forced onto him) and plays Cordswitch Bos on servers that will accept the name.
As for the other examples I don’t know if they changed to the names you have here (I haven’t personally seen the changes in-game), I kind of doubt it since people do really care about the name of their characters for the reasons I said above.
I know if I was for whatever reason not allowed to call my lizard character Forgets-Her-Name I would be devastated and wouldn’t want to change it to something that fits the guildelines since it quite literally would ruin a large part of her character. Eventually I would have to decide to either kill her off or leave to go somewhere what would allow her name to pass. Things that I wouldn’t want to do
That’s how I imagine people who put in the time in Bee would feel when they are told they can’t have a name.
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I know, I’m saying they could have and everyone would have known it was them; they did not have to trash their character as a moth, they chose to. @ValuedEmployee might have some harsh words for me regarding this opinion being so blunt, but that is ultimately my honest opinion about the aftermath of that. They could have continued as the same moth named “Cordswitch” and people would barely have thought twice in general.
Kerlin did
Sholl is still appearance banned as far as I know. I tried suggesting he take the names listed and that he didn’t need to trash the character, but the posts were removed from the appeal for being off-topic.
If we look at policy to the exact letter your name does break it, but it’s far from the only lizard name that does and it seems to be “close enough” not to bother anyone who does care a lot about policy, myself included.
Other notable examples of names being against policy to the exact letter include the dozen or more oozelings with gemstone names instead of colors, and Moths with single names that are just names instead of Single word object, concept or event of some importance , such as Hapi, Meta, Moona, and StarShot. Moona got permanently banned for other reasons though, so I only know of the other three as active players.
inb4 I get a bwoink for techinally not following the guildelines after you just mentioning that. 
Didn’t really want to continue discussing on this thread but here goes:
You’re right, a lot of people would have barely noticed the difference. But it’s not their character’s development, it’s mine. A major reason why I don’t like the naming guidelines is because someone gripped my character and told me “No, they cannot be who you developed them to be even though it was genuine and didn’t break any lore or immersion.”
What I dislike about some of the arguments put forth being made for the naming guidelines is that they want other players to roleplay how they want. As a roleplayer myself, please leave my character alone. They’re not yours, stop telling me how to roleplay if I’m not lowering the roleplay standard of the server. People can whine about lizards named after humans all day but they’re not your character, hands off.
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If the server wants everyone to have average joe names that fit their chosen species convention, and it’s clearly stated that this is desired in the rules:
- You either missed the rule and made an honest mistake. That sucks, but it’s still breaking the rule and expectation.
- You read the rule and intentionally ignored it and I’m definitely not the one in the wrong for wanting it corrected because I wanted to play on a server that has naming conventions enforced.
- You were given a special exception by staff, which causes confusion and turmoil down the road.
I can understand how it can be painful to let a character name you have grown attached to go and I do agree your name had a good reason behind it, especially if we could get clearance for some sort of character flavor text to be added to explain deviations.