Access requests
What happens when someone asks to see a private archive.
Someone who served with the honoree finds the archive — through a reunion, a rating association, another family. They cannot see it, because it is private. They ask.
How that request is handled matters more than most things on this site. A shipmate welcomed well often becomes the best contributor the guest wall ever has. One left waiting becomes a story told about the studio.
What happens
The request arrives
The person asking gives their name, how they knew the honoree, and anything they want to say. They are told immediately that the request has reached a person and that the family decides, not the studio.
It comes to you with context
You receive the request along with whatever the person said about themselves. If anything about it looks off, that is flagged to you rather than passed along silently.
You decide
Grant, decline, or ask for more. There is no obligation to explain a decline, and a declined request is not passed back with your reasoning attached.
The requester hears back
Either way they get an answer. Declines are courteous and give nothing away about the family's reasoning.
What the studio will never do
Access is never granted unilaterally. Not for someone with a convincing story, not for someone claiming to have served with the honoree, not for someone claiming to be family. The account holder decides, every time.
This holds even when the studio believes the request is genuine and the family is slow to answer. A request going unanswered is a cost the family chooses to bear. Access granted without them is a breach.
If you would rather not decide each time
Two standing arrangements are available:
- Auto-grant by community. Anyone who can demonstrate they served in the honoree's rating or command is granted access without coming to you.
- Auto-decline. No requests are surfaced at all. The archive is address-only, permanently.
Either can be set at handover or changed later.
Response times
[DECISION NEEDED: state the studio's acknowledgement commitment to the requester, and the escalation window if the account holder does not respond.]