[Rule 5 Clarification: "Mute"/Disabled Command Members]

On the discord, a discussion about mute command members cropped up. Here's the discussion background:

ARMA-492 pointed out:

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There has been a decision from the admins that it is a reason to be demoted if you are going to play a mute hop

@DGamerL followed up with a confirmation,

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you are not allowed ruleswise to play a mute member of command.

As I play a "mute" character who speaks primarily through telepathy for background reasons, this was relevant to me. I asked:

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How does this apply to Acting positions? I play a mute character but do not sign up for command, but have been asked to be acting. Should I refuse?

And DGamerL offered:

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uhhh also not I think

And ARMA-492 elaborated:

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We have had so many people trolling as command by playing a mute or stuff like that and in the past it was legit risky to do anything against it so now even in the server rules it is bad rp

Gardener/LOOT/Nyla/Eely/EtA/4 remarked, and I found similarly,

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Oh it's in the server rules ? Didn't saw it x/

to which ARMA-492 explained,

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it falls under bad rp rules

[...]

Rule 5 is pretty much explains it a bit and it has been gone over that command is a role that must communicate so yea

[..]

you are required to communicate on coms I do not speak for the admins just things on what I know and I do not recomment playing as a mute command

[...]

I don't recall seeing specific references to muteness or disability in the rules or advanced rules, so I gave them another cursory read, and CTRL-F'd "mute", but didn't find anything. Gardener/LOOT/Nyla/Eely/EtA/4 suggested that it comes from Command SoP, namely HoP SoP #7:

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The Head of Personnel may not leave their office unmanned if there are personnel waiting in line. Failure to respond to personnel with a legitimate request within ten (10) minutes, either via radio or in person, is to be considered a breach of Standard Operating Procedure.

This is good additional context, and helps draw some lines. But it still leaves some "grey" area (pardon the pun). Namely, does telepathy count as a valid form of "in-person" response? Does PDA message? What about voice recordings sampled and transmitted over radio? My reading of the rules left me unclear on this, so I kept digging. I found a pull request which spells out in certain terms a set of disabilities which are forbidden for command and security members:

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/20338

Which is very helpful additional context. However, it still does not answer my question, as Greys are disabled from speaking by the Wingdings gene, not Mute.

Now, the whole question might be thought of as moot, because Greys can simply elect to start with a voice translator. However, the RP flavor question remains, and is personal to me. For reference, one of my characters is a Grey who has a voice translator implant, but canonically is in a great deal of debt, and so I roleplay them as on a "pay-as-you-go" plan for their voice box. I have seen other characters in-game that may or may not have the mute gene, but communicate effectively via PDA, emotes, and gestures. Would characters who are, RP-wise, financially, spiritually, or otherwise non-mechanically limited in their speech fall under this same rule?

For my character specifically, I don't sign up for command roles, but have accepted acting roles before. Should I have this character refuse such promotions going forward?

I think it's reasonable that there are limitations in terms of roles and disabilities. This post is not intended to raise the question of whether there should be such restrictions. Rather, the focus of this post is on disambiguating the boundaries of these restrictions, and exploring their applicability beyond gene-based limitations. Thank you for your time and your thoughts.