[Martin Smith]

Thanks Martin, that's great.
Again, I'm not suggesting any of these solutions as a catchall for all SRS series or races, as part of the joy of SRS is that we have a low bar to entry, that encourages folk to join in, be active and enjoy the racing. 
My initial brain dump / thought on Discord was really to wonder whether it might be worth an experiment with one open wheel series, say a weekly or bi-weekly slot, and use some sort of additional filter for that series. Then see how it goes for a few months.

See, this is part of my confusion. I don't see why a system that cleans up the racing in one series shouldn't be applied to all series.

I kind of understand the difference if a pre-quali system is used to exclude people from a particular series. We don't want to exclude people from every SRS series!

But I don't know why any evaluation system should be used to exclude anybody to begin with, since we can simply split anyone who failed to reach the standard into their own server. This is the case regardless of whether it's a ratings standard, a pre-quali exercise, or a licensing system. So my thinking is that nobody needs to be turned away from a series if they can be split into another server. Is this wrong?

As for what form a pre-quali system might take, I tried an exercise yesterday that could very clearly demonstrate the type of driving stanard needed to have clean raing online, but... I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to implement.

Here's what I did, in case it might spark someone else to have a eureka moment:

I created a 3-lap Exos S1 race against a full grid of 27 AI cars at Monza, who were set at 80% performance. Starting from the back, the exercise is to finish in the top 10 with ZERO incidents.

Finishing in the top 10 is dead easy in this exercise, but avoidinfpg incidens is extremely hard! It takes an anourmous amount of discipline to just park behind these very slow cars and wait for them to file through the corners like a lineup at a drive-through burger joint.

I'd be curious to hear what you guys think if you give it a try. I actually failed a dizen times or so because it was so much fun to try and eek out a position under braking or squeeze between a couple slowpokes. But it always came at a cost of incident(s), which I could see from my body damage.

Food for thought.