Sorry if I misunderstood you! "at least some kind of specific bar that has to be met" sounded like a one-size-fits-all sort of proposal, or at least one-minimum-fits-all, and that was what I was reacting to.
To be clear, I can absolutely imagine cases where a player wants/plans to graduate a character at a point that doesn't really make sense giving the setting and the broader, looser precedent of its history, and where we'd want to be able to check in with the player before they went ahead with it, and make sure everyone is on the same page. My point with the historical example in the previous comment, though, is how that graduation very much looked like a super dubious one from the outside! But since I was friends with that player and privy to her plurks and some of her plotting info, I know that she had a lot of thought put into where that seemingly counterproductive incident fit into her journey.
I fully understand that not every case is like this! Very occasionally (like, once or twice in a year or two) a proposed/intended graduation is one that shouldn't fly, and the form is intended to help us respond to those rare cases more consistently. But we don't want to open the floor for heavily scrutinizing the plot arcs of every character, and in general we are just not going to make hard-and-fast rules across the board, because character growth can be so different and weird.
In terms of it being potentially disillusioning/disheartening/an obstacle to other inmates graduation....yes. It can be! Jedao was super disillusioned! He's still here almost four years later! But there are and have always been lots of things about the barge that are damaging or disillusioning for at least some inmates. For example, we have a horrible port event where the characters have to fight off/rescue their comrades from evil scientists who want to experiment on them? There's drama! Tension! Stakes! People making choices! IC plot happens! But it's also 1000% reasonable for some inmates to react to events like that with "wow, the fact that I got crashlanded somewhere and vivisected makes me really feel like the admiral does not actually give a shit about me or my welfare, I don't believe any of this crap". A more simpler example might just be "I really trusted and made a lot of progress with my warden, and then they fucking disappeared" - because the player had to drop. But IC, it can be a huge blow! Part of the game having this many moving parts means that nothing is going to be 'good' for everyone (in terms of moving toward graduation). Some things are going to be 'bad' for almost everyone (like unexpected drops) but are OOC necessities. Some things happening that can harm an inmate's progress toward graduation and cause backsliding is always going to be a part of the game.
In terms of it being 'rigged', we've tried hard as mods to make it clear that the admiral MOSTLY is on the level, because that makes it more tenable for Warden characters with a lot of doubts about the setting to remain in play rather than quitting in protest, but that's always come with a big heap of the admiral being snarky, shady, and refusing to fully explain or justify himself, not always in control of exactly what goes down and sometimes failing to fully understand what the mortals in his care need. Which allows for things like drops and dark events to happen. Giving players agency over their own characters (barring, as I said, RARE exceptions, which I am not discounting) is an OOC priority that's pretty core to the game premise.
TL;DR: We're hoping to keep a closer and fairer eye on graduations but that's not going to lead to a version of the barge where graduations are never shocking or upsetting to other characters, or effects their own arcs.
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To be clear, I can absolutely imagine cases where a player wants/plans to graduate a character at a point that doesn't really make sense giving the setting and the broader, looser precedent of its history, and where we'd want to be able to check in with the player before they went ahead with it, and make sure everyone is on the same page. My point with the historical example in the previous comment, though, is how that graduation very much looked like a super dubious one from the outside! But since I was friends with that player and privy to her plurks and some of her plotting info, I know that she had a lot of thought put into where that seemingly counterproductive incident fit into her journey.
I fully understand that not every case is like this! Very occasionally (like, once or twice in a year or two) a proposed/intended graduation is one that shouldn't fly, and the form is intended to help us respond to those rare cases more consistently. But we don't want to open the floor for heavily scrutinizing the plot arcs of every character, and in general we are just not going to make hard-and-fast rules across the board, because character growth can be so different and weird.
In terms of it being potentially disillusioning/disheartening/an obstacle to other inmates graduation....yes. It can be! Jedao was super disillusioned! He's still here almost four years later! But there are and have always been lots of things about the barge that are damaging or disillusioning for at least some inmates. For example, we have a horrible port event where the characters have to fight off/rescue their comrades from evil scientists who want to experiment on them? There's drama! Tension! Stakes! People making choices! IC plot happens! But it's also 1000% reasonable for some inmates to react to events like that with "wow, the fact that I got crashlanded somewhere and vivisected makes me really feel like the admiral does not actually give a shit about me or my welfare, I don't believe any of this crap". A more simpler example might just be "I really trusted and made a lot of progress with my warden, and then they fucking disappeared" - because the player had to drop. But IC, it can be a huge blow! Part of the game having this many moving parts means that nothing is going to be 'good' for everyone (in terms of moving toward graduation). Some things are going to be 'bad' for almost everyone (like unexpected drops) but are OOC necessities. Some things happening that can harm an inmate's progress toward graduation and cause backsliding is always going to be a part of the game.
In terms of it being 'rigged', we've tried hard as mods to make it clear that the admiral MOSTLY is on the level, because that makes it more tenable for Warden characters with a lot of doubts about the setting to remain in play rather than quitting in protest, but that's always come with a big heap of the admiral being snarky, shady, and refusing to fully explain or justify himself, not always in control of exactly what goes down and sometimes failing to fully understand what the mortals in his care need. Which allows for things like drops and dark events to happen. Giving players agency over their own characters (barring, as I said, RARE exceptions, which I am not discounting) is an OOC priority that's pretty core to the game premise.
TL;DR: We're hoping to keep a closer and fairer eye on graduations but that's not going to lead to a version of the barge where graduations are never shocking or upsetting to other characters, or effects their own arcs.