Don't you remember the episode with, I believe the town was called Oakhaven? The entire town was destroyed and because of the plots within the town being rolled back to wilderness the entire server was lagged to the point the admins had to shut it down and let the town rollback on its own or else nobody could do anything.

If we still had that function implemented when Forthwind went down we would have had the incident all over again, the admins having to shut the server down to let the town return to normal. I believe this is the main reason that they admins have kept this function out.

Also, no one can be assured that a town mayor is entirely trustworthy with this. Who's to say that a mayor won't just /plot clear plots of players they don't like, and since you said yourself the items drop out of the chests then they'd have full access to stealing items from player's chests. It's bad enough we've already gotten reports of a mayor or two supposedly kicking people from town to get the materials they used to make their town, thinking that they could also use something to steal from their chests too is just too much.

The reason that moderators do not give out items from chests anymore is because we weren't supposed to from the beginning, we simply didn't know that until the admins pointed it out. The items do not belong to the town, nor do they belong to anyone but the account to which the chest is registered to. Therefore no one has the right to simply take the items that another player has put tons of effort into, it's almost the same as theft, even if the person is still not around.

The problem with /plot clear would still remain. A town mayor could still go around and /plot clear all their plots, and the lag would hit the server as each plot struggles to return itself block by block to what it was before the town claimed it. And from what I remember, /plot clear has only been used to unlock signs and doors. I believe it had been /town unclaim, which returned a plot to what it had been before, which would mean that that command would have to be restricted to mayor only, limiting what those below the mayor can do period.

I believe that's something to do with Lockette. I've heard Foob mention it before, but I don't know if it's something he controls or just something that happens that he can't mess with because it's just in the plugin. I have, though, come across chests that hadn't been accessed for nearly 150 days that were still locked, so it doesn't always remove the lock on its own it seems like.

But even if you had the permission and did plot clear, you would be griefing that persons plot, also as you mentioned all the items from the chests would fall out, then you are taking other players items without their permission, that is stealing.

In Glasgow, we kick the innactive members and then remove there houses with tools and then place those items used to build their house in to a "Lost and found" type of storage that Buckie set up, is this an alright thing to do? :S. If not then what's the best way to clear innactive plots?

Well at 1 point I had a mod roleback a plot without knowing that it wasn't allowed to ask them and I was told it wasn't allowed and that the staff didn't have the time to do every persons plot that was inactive.

So I think you may get told the same thing.

It is a moderator's job to clear chests and stuff that are locked as a player that is not owner of it can't do it, clearing a plot is not a moderators job so asking them to roll it back for you is lazy, I am asking for a way to do it easier myself instead of spending hours removing the house.