In the last few months, regional passwords have been in discussion a great deal. They are controversial because raiders use them often to lock down regions and keep both defenders and the former residents of those regions out. As a result, in the past there's been some call to remove or limit passwords, culminating in the creation of Liberation resolutions. However, any attempt to limit passwording is firmly opposed by non-Gameplay people who believe that passwords are necessary to keep their regions safe, or by raider-defender people who believe that anyone who wants to stay out of their game should set a password for security.
The problem with their argument is that if a region has a function beyond acting as a raider-defender battleground, passwording comes at a price that far outweighs its utility: Passworded regions cannot recruit. New nations don't like complications, and so overwhelmingly ignore recruitment telegrams with "if you're interested, apply for the password" attached. Sending them the password with the recruitment telegram is just as bad of an idea for security reasons. Unless a region has a reliable source of involved, personally collected recruits (Like Haven, or...actually, are there any examples of this in the entire game besides Haven? I've never heard of any.) they have effectively set themselves up for the slow death of their region.
My suggestion is this: When the founder or delegate of a region sends telegrams, they should have a check-box that sends an 'Invitation' with the telegram. The Invitation would apply to the recruited nation for a set period of time (say, one week?) and would allow them to bypass the regional password while it was in effect. If an Invited nation looked at the region, they would see a note by the password note saying that the password is waived for them. This would allow passworded regions to recruit new nations while still keeping the uninvited at bay.
(EDIT: I realize that this is somewhat similar to the previously proposed idea of a whitelist. The idea here is to streamline the process for quick, large-scale use and leave existing password mechanics in place.)
