Alright peeps, I took some time and fleshed out some policies for player run groups in DE. I'm going to bullet point the details; feel free to comment. It's not set in stone so I welcome constructive feedback.

We recognize two overall types of groups:
1) Official (groups established by management and accessible via registration/invite systems)
2) Player Run

Official groups are pretty obvious ... they are your IC businesses we've setup with instant invite systems, municipal groups (ie. police, hospital, rescue), and the main role-play group. Overall, these groups have already been established and are not really the subject of this thread.

Player Run groups is what this discussion is all about. These are the groups that are proposed through our new Group Proposal Portal, go through a peer review here on the forums, and are finally approved by sim management.

Within these "Player Run" groups, we have identified the following sub types:
1) IC Business
2) Criminal Faction
3) Cult

For the IC Business, the proposal process is really more of a registration; we really welcome non-violent / social groups to help enhance the urban feel of our RP environment. The factions and cults have a much more detailed proposal setup with prerequisites and persistant reporting/engagement on behalf of the leader w/ the community.

For details on the policies, please review them in the "Group Proposal" subforum within this primary RP Discussion forum. You will find the limits we're placing on gangs, such as 6 active members at a time, so that we can reduce "armies" and promote more diversity be encouraging people to step up and take leadership w/ unique ideas. Also, with a limit like this, we're opening up the ability for people to establish their own groups and even maintain a single DE title to be used on the sim. This privilege will be strictly regulated by both staff and most especially, the leader of the group.

Every player-run group in DE will have to go through this official process, even if they exist now. By enforcing this, we (both community and management) can monitor what's going on, who's responsible for what, and allow us to publish information to a central location for new and existing users to learn (ie. Official Group Directory).