Access lists are a fairly flexible way to control who can and can’t use what services, but I’ve found synchronizing the access lists with the contact list to be tedious and error prone. To address this, I would like to propose the addition expansion of what I uncreatively call ‘blocks’.
We have one block. That block is the public and includes literally everyone without us having to specify. Other possible blocks include:
- Corporate/Alliance Blues
- Corporate/Alliance Reds
- Corporations currently renting an office
- Custom Lists with a Player defined label or description.
The application of the standings blocks is obvious. Most of us use those as a matter of course and being able to apply them to our structures in this way would be very convenient. The application for the office rental block is to give preferential treatment to those who commit to the office fee, akin to people paying a membership fee for reduced rates or service access, as might be handy if you want to deny use of a compression service for zero cost. Less useful than standings, but still potentially useful.
Custom lists are more abstract in their application, but could be useful in cases where multiple access lists are set to a service to ensure the unwelcome are blocked on every list, otherwise it would be necessary to add such an unwelcome guest to each list manually to deny them. (Structure profiles use the most favorable access list for an individual.)
If custom blocks could be shared and group administered like access lists are, so much the better.