First. Restoration of areas near spawn. Nether rails, nether rail entrances, and buildings of non-banned players would be kept accessible and intact, but buildings and locked chests of perma/IP banned players would be removed if in the way. Trees would be planted too, but have to match the biome (e.g. don't plant spruces in deserts with no water, or acacias/jungles where it's cold and snowy). Flowers would also likely be introduced, and ferns if it was a jungle. Deserts that already have grass or are tiny, I suggest to instead make look like savannas (the foilage color is the same, and neither experience rain). Second. Put threads for outposts that are major compared to EMC at the top of the frontier forum. This would be so they can get more attention. Major outposts could be those with at least 30 members and outposts that are far along in building. Before this could happen: 1) they would have to be active, 2) staff would have to check how many members and how much buildings they have, 3) the government of the outpost would have to approve. Third. Turn off mobgriefing within 5k of spawns and in major outposts. This is so withers and ghasts couldn't ruin people's builds in large outposts and so that they don't mess up the spawns worse than they already are. There would be an exception, which would be still allowing villagers to plant and harvest crops (that is normally affected by mobgriefing so else it could ruin some farms!).
While I would like the results of "First", this sounds like an awful lot of manual work for whoever is doing it. Either you'd have to recruit some trusted player volunteers (define "trusted"?) or the CMs need to spend weeks of their time on that, which they probably don't want. Second: I don't think any gouvernment would approve, at least not until claims are implemented. It's far too easy for new players to grief, or for banned players who use their friend's account (which they don't mind getting banned here as they don't intend to play anyway) to take revenge on whoever they think faulted them. Even with /buildmode, people don't remodel the ground so you could dig up large holes, or build 6 block penises all over the area, or ... Third: terrible idea. Ghasts don't break much else then netherrack anyway, so build should be safe if they're done well. And withers? Build a small box in an outpost that the wither can't break, spawn the wither in that box so he can't escape, and just bash it to death without any trouble? If you build the box right you could probably even fight it without any danger to you. This would more or less ruin the purpose of the wither to need *some* skill and equipment to defeat.
I was suggesting it because it has been complained about by many for a long time. I've known someone (I think he left) who was trustworthy and wanted it cleaned up, so much he did it in a similar way to what I had suggested. He wasn't griefing or blocking access to others' builds, either. Claims existed before anti-grief, and it's Empires that will apply that kind of protection. /buildmode protects against 95% of damage, pillars aren't as hard to handle (unless they're placed in buildmode, in which case you can get staff), and it's very unlikely that a griefer would last long enough to get enough water/lava buckets and time to flood an entire outpost. However, I'm not saying it's impossible, because all of these things have happened. Hacked accounts are so illegal that even some griefers are discouraged. Some people do build with netherrack and/or build tree farms in the nether. Withers can attack you through any gap that you can attack them through, and they could put limits on what blocks can be protected in that way.
Sorry for a belated response, I didn't see this thread earlier on We already have a group who are going to take up on this, the FCC: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/fcc-the-frontier-clean-up-crew.67773/ ... reminds me to write that (short) manifest I've been planning for some time now I'm a little behind the happenings regarding the FCC but we're currently busy planning our next project, most likely happening upcoming weekend. We do exactly what you're describing here: trying to clean up the Frontier. And not in a patching up way, but by actually terraforming (as Evesthery calls it). I agree about established outposts, but that is probably going to be handled when Empires become a thing. But everything else should be left as is in my opinion. Because those creepers, withers (you make those yourself anyway!) and ghast also form a risk in gameplay, as they should. If they couldn't do too much damage then this would also result in the game becoming way too easy. Right now you need to plan ahead, be careful with crossing that lava lake on a single netherrack bridge because if an explosion happens then the netherhounds will get to enjoy you medium rare or well done But that is all part of the game.
