Warning: I'm expecting this to be a wall of text. The basic idea is that you should be hardcore, that the thief shouldn't be punished, that it's your fault if it happens, and that it's happened to me many times and that's allowed me to learn more about how I should and shouldn't be recruiting, and what works and doesn't, as well as finding a balance between security and population.
A lot of you heard yesterday about Orb_Of_Thor and the ragepunishment that followed our discovery of his betrayal. These things happen, and they do suck, but they're the reason that Spire and many other towns are now becoming very, very careful about their towns' recruitment process. In Spire we have the system of requiring a reccomendation from several lowranks or 1-2 mid-highranks within the town, after which we go and check out the user, see what we can find out about him, check his bans, make sure he's going to be a safe citizen, etc.. That doesn't mean that we don't recruit newcomers, it's just that they have to be trusted first, so we can't just recruit anyone. Even after all of this, we still do occasionally have our system foiled, like by Orb_Of_thor, who had reccomendations but didn't go through me before joining simply due to my own mistakes and lazyness. If I knew before what I know about him now, things would have been easier for me and, although we recovered everything he took and broke, we would never have had an issue. But it did happen.
All the same, while I say that I know what you guys mean and that I know how annoying it is to lose huge amounts of valuables for stuff like this - it is the fault of the town and I don't think, HeroCraft being a hardcore server, robbing your own town should be a bannable offence - if anything it makes towns more cautious about its recruitment and not able to just find any newcomer and force them to join, which is a little annoying. If you choose to recruit a citizen who has been in an enemy town before or who looks suspicious, and then don't give your chests proper protection in a guarded vault, LWCs or even just in the town hall like Mak said, that's not the thief's fault. If anything, it's yours. There are methods ofc that are illegal of getting into the town - griefing the town to get around, griefing the valuable blocks, and most importantly, using second accounts to join your town, which IS bannable. But it's your responsibility to watch over your town and make sure you're not recruiting thieves or murderers who are planning to weaken your town, whether it be by robbing your town, opening gates for raid parties, or stirring up rebellion within your citizens. If you want to look at it in a 'real life' point of view, look at it this way: In order to enter a country, you need a visa. Permanent living visas are only given to people who are able, useful and will be loyal for the country. In order to stop those people from turning into thieves, the police and the law exists. To add to that, each citizen has their own little security systems installed. When you let a thief into your town - you're giving that thief (In this case a newcomer, or a random who you've never met) a visa into your town. By giving him regions, you're giving him the power to get past those security systems. If your cits haven't noticed the user stealing from your town, as very nearly happened with orb_of_thor, you don't have anyone to enforce the law for you. Is that the thief's fault, or yours? Perhaps both, but it was caused by your lack of forethought about the situation. The thief will be punished, by your own people, your own lawkeepers, if you can catch him, but you're the one who's going to get the blame, because you gave the thief the power he needed to do what he did. And you're the one that your citizens are going to blame, much like a town's mayor will be blamed for lack of security in real life, if many of their town's people were robbed of all they had gained.
And how is it safer to live in the wilderness than in a town? When I'm crossing between towns or heading towards a Forward Operations Base that's been setup in the wild, every time I see a house and don't know the person who owns it - I go in and make sure that I take everything there, usually after breaking and replacing most of the walls to check for chests, and usually after finding large amounts of loot along the way so that I can survive at the Foward Operations Base or on my way to a town without needing further supplies. All these people have ALL of their work taken away just because a passerby decided to check out their house and take what they could. In a town, you have regioned chests, town hall regions, all of your citizens providing money/tax which you can use for LWCs AND more people to keep watch over the houses and chests and keep things safe. That's much, much safer than one lowlevel, unfortunate player who happens to get attacked by one a town's passing raid team, which could be as much as 10 people, who completely destroy all of their work. I don't know how many houses I've passed in the wilderness that have a sign telling me how much they hate the server after they've lost every posession that they've worked for. Quite frankly, if you think living in a town is unsafe compared to the wild, you should go and try it - if even one town's cits find you and find good loot in your house, the whole town is going to know soon.
That's just my 10 cents haha. If there are enough people who want town theft to be illegal, I suppose it'll happen, but as a user for whom it has happened to many times, I think it's an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and make sure that you're recruiting the right people for your town. By all means, let the newcomers stay in your inn until you know them well, and when you trust them, THEN let them join. Just saying that they shouldn't be punished for your mistakes.
