[PSA] Regarding servers making it onto the header

#Nevermind. Just killed the header. Next time a feature causes that much drama I'm just going to delete it, and that's a lot easier than hand-writing them. All the servers that need exposure (Rewritten, Apex, Toontown Offline, CIO, TT2, TTF, etc.) already have it in their own fanbases. This was simply an ease of access feature, but of course, nobody can get along regarding who gets it, and as soon as today's drama goes away like it always does, it'll probably happen again next week. That being said, feature removed.

We have had a lot of people asking us why certain servers have been "excluded" from the header, when in-fact that is not the case at all.

The answer to this frequently-asked question is a combination of things (the three S's), in order of importance:

• Safety: There is no way to verify the long-standing safety of any server besides long-standing trust and proof of being an example of quality family-friendly standards and safety. Even then, there is always a chance of something bad happening and trust is unfortunately never certain. Unfortunately this community is very prone to liars, scammers, and all around bad-eggs (which we've experienced many times when possibly supporting a server in the past) and with the community being based around a game for young children with a community including them, we need to make sure the chance of anything going awry is very low. I personally communicate often with the staff of each server on the header and know many of the developers, the people keeping your information safe, personally and take a lot of precautions to ensure any server we support is securely transporting sensitive information (like passwords) and also setting a good example for the younger toons in the community.

• Standard: Servers make it onto the header by being discussed on the subreddit by members of the community. If we see a lot of interest or players in a certain server, we add it to the header. There is currently no process for "requesting" to be on the header and is something that comes naturally with time, and when that time does come, you will be contacted by us to help you get set up should you choose to accept. It is a privilege, not a right. As much as we'd love to support all Toontown servers, there are simply too many out there to keep track of if they are not significant within the community. Again, safety is our #1 concern! Once a server makes it onto the header, it is usually only removed by consequence of an action or if it shuts down, rather than removing it based on continued observation of discussion amounts. Consider it like a medal, it can be nullified if you go out and do something terrible, however it does not disappear with time even if (a lot of supported servers still would, however) you would no longer earn a medal today. (i.e. old Olympians don't lose their medals because they wouldn't be able to do it again, the point is of their achievements at a certain point) The only exception to this is the server announcing it is shutting down or by moderator discretion. If your server shuts down and restarts, you are NOT entitled to another header space and will need to re-earn your spot along the same lines of a brand new server. To avoid arguments: Servers are sorted in the header solely based on age of the server. Again, if your server "restarts", your age is from when you restarted. No exceptions.

• Space: We have a limited number of space for CSS coding and images, as well as limited time to work to get this done beside our real lives. It takes a decent amount of effort to not only keep an eye out on these servers but also resize an icon for them, script them in, add all of their images and links, and continuously re-create the bounding box image to accommodate the width of the new servers being added.

These are the reasons we cannot support every server on our header. Keep in mind even if we don't support a certain server, doesn't mean they were excluded for any particular reason or because "we don't like them", it is simply because of these three guidelines we need to recognize when planning to add new servers to our header. We do not control what servers succeed or exist, we encourage all toons to get out there and explore past our boundaries, but please remember to be safe while doing it!

Thanks, and have fun!
OtakuSRL
/r/Toontown Head Moderator