I. What puts you off in a faction? (iRP and ooRP)
Factions are limiting the inRP experience with the means they offer to communicate. I am highly against ooRP contacts via Skype or Discord, which is why I only have so many people in my Skype contacts and don't even bother with other platforms. I do enjoy inRP groupchats, however you rarely find a faction that does that. I want to interact with the characters, not with the people behind the characters, simply because they are way less interesting to me, and mostly disappointing the better you know them. If a characters says something bad or dumb, you can simply deal with it as inRP action. If a person of this community says something bad or dumb, you're dealing with someone you accuse of being an idiot. Nobody likes dealing with idiots.
As mentioned by other people already, the faction mentality is quite strong. People tend to take their faction as the most important thing in Discovery and some rather prefer to display the evil traits of their faction not for the RP but because it is a good excuse to be a dick to other people ooRP. Many factions are mostly for raids and counters, and their members often reduce their actions to only that, because in the end, joining a combat faction is for most people just to hang out with their friends and have fun flying together with them. It works for many people, but I also know how much bad blood can be created when a wingman requires your help and doesn't realize you are having your own problem in the fight, which leads to salt and unnecessary bad mood. That is why I don't bother to log for group fights and just log my 43567934586 battleships, get one or two kills before I go down myself and then call it a day.
I highly despise most Official Faction Leaders because of their attitude. Some of them have been corrupted by the title they inherited. I expect OFLs to lead their factions inRP and ooRP, not to pretend they have a say about NPC assets to jerk off to, make stupid power comparisons and the worst: Trying to lobby everything via forum or backroom deals with greens and yellows via Skype. This is a thing. And it is disappointing. It is also the reason why I always refused to take the role of the 1iC of the factions I was part of. I came to realization I don't have any of those annoying struggles when I just play as indie, and thankfully I have an SRP'd Mako which allows me to enjoy battleship gameplay without ZoI or group invitations. On the other hand, I am absolutely on my own because of this, which makes me an easy target. Which, if the motivation behind it is correct, is a nice way to spice up things.
II. What makes you log and long for faction interaction? (iRP and ooRP)
As OSI, I used to fly for other people to help them with their RP projects which often required people to haul stuff from A to B. OSI is the perfect faction for that because of the ID. Everyone knows you're a simple target, but also everyone knows you do these kinds of favors for other people. Since I love the Whale for the easy way of handling it (it does not wiggle) and OSI allows to dock in house space with it, I just enjoyed it, even with OSI not having an active playerbase, which also means you get to enjoy Aazalot asking questions about things that are established for many years, while he was your superior.
As for the Vagrants, Foxglove asked me to help him. I did the graphics and the concepts for gameplay, and since most of our people are very nice fellows who don't behave like ghetto-people. That was my demand for being part of the Vagrants: I don't want people around me I don't like. I don't want to deal with idiots, and luckily we have enough nice people here in this community.
I do believe, though, that my main reason to still be with the Vagrants is the simple fact I enjoy flying with those guys. They are very chilled and there is no bad blood if PvP is not in our favor. I have my distinct role in this faction, PvP-wise, as the person who managed to get an Ish'tar, and enjoy playing this super-heavy battleship for the five minutes until I was converted into a blue.
III. Specifically, would you care to interact, support or play in a faction that specifically goes for supplying underdogs with at least an inch of morality? (That is, no slavery, no carda and stuff of that sort.)
I'd like to interact with them, but I won't join any new faction.