sansapants

Rather than starting a new topic, I'll ask here: Will the Rev 27 map be available for download? It's been almost seven months since Rev 27 ended. Thanks.

It's been two months since Rev 26 ended. Will the map download be available soon? Thanks!

From purely anectdotal experience, darkroom spawners haven't worked well since Rev 9. That rev, WaterSlide built one in Brom that worked quite well. A similar one built in Rev 10 performed poorly, or at least not nearly as good as the one from Rev 9. I don't recall hearing about others building successful darkroom spawners in revs 11, 12, or 13. Human nature being what it is, hopefully my statement will cause others who have evidence to the contrary to quickly prove me wrong. *Why* darkroom spawners don't work is a mystery to me: I simply know that they're generally an exercise in futility on this server.

I am not taking a position on this issue at this time. However, I want to discuss several issues that would arise were we to move to public staff voting, some of which have been briefly touched upon already by others. There are currently no formal requirements and/or qualifications for becoming a staff member. Were public nomination and/or voting implemented, it would be a good idea to have qualifications for candidates. For example, candidates must have played a certain number of hours over the past two (or more) revisions of their “home” server, and/or a certain number of hours across any combination of servers in a certain period of time. This would help ensure that potential staff are active members of the community. Additionally, official mutes, notes, and bans should be taken into account. Less formal and harder to quantify are possible instances of “bad behavior” that did not merit official action by a staff member, yet were still egregious enough to cause concern about a candidate’s ability to be a responsible staff member. Server and head admins would need to ability to block a candidate for cause. Admins are often privy to private discussions among themselves and with players regarding specific incidents. Candidates might need to agree to waive their server privacy rights to have logs of questionable instances and/or the content of private conversations with/among admins made public. Additionally, candidates should agree that all of their alts, even their “secret” ones, should be made public. This would be in the interest of full disclosure and transparency, as it would enable voters to make the most fully informed decision about a candidate’s ability to be a responsible staff member. A procedure would need to be developed for “campaigns” by candidates, as well as public comment by players as to whether a candidate is suitable to be a staff member. For example, it would need to be made clear that the no-spam rule for game chat would include a prohibition on “too many” campaign messages by both candidates and voters (though what is “too many” would need to be determined, and could end up being a complete prohibition of campaign endorsements in chat). Regarding voters, some sort of minimum eligibility would need to be implemented, along with a registration system. This would ensure that only currently active members of the community are voting, and prevent (along with minimum qualifications for candidates) frivolous candidates being elected due to ballot stuffing by people who are not active community members and/or members who create alt accounts to vote more than once. Registration should be required for each election, to ensure that long-inactive members are not registered to vote in perpetuity. Criteria for both candidates and voters could, for example, be the same, or voter qualifications could be less strenuous (i.e. fewer required hours of game time) than for candidates. Regarding how candidates are selected, would it be useful to require candidates to have sponsorship from one (or several) current staff member(s)? Another issue is term limits and/or re-election. Currently, staff are only removed for serious infractions, and/or at their request. Would a public voting scheme also bring with it term limits? Would current staff need to run for re-election against new candidates, or only against other current staff members? Term limits also begs the question about term limits and election of server and head admins, but that should be a kept a separate issue from public staff votes, to avoid muddying the waters. The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list of issues that would arise were we to implement public voting for staff. They are meant to show that moving to public elections would require some serious work to ensure free and fair elections. TL;DR: minimum qualifications for candidates; admin involvement in candidate selection; voter registration; term limits/re-election of staff.

Thank you, totemo. You're the best!

I think a quarterly accounting of inactive mods would be sufficient. If an inactive mod is inactive for at least 3 months, they should be automatically moved into the past moderators category. I also think it would be good idea to have formalized and separate processes in switching from inactive to active, and past to active. For example, assuming that quarterly (or other periodic) culling of inactive moderators is implemented, an inactive mod who wishes to be reinstated would simply need to notify the head admins of their desire. But moving from past moderator status to active status should involve a more rigorous process. I would like to see notice given to the entire staff that a past moderator desires to return to active duty. The past moderator should then be required to play for at least a minimum number of hours over a set time period. Putting the staff on notice of a past mod's intentions will allow staff to pay attention to them in-game. While a formal vote of the entire staff should not be necessary (as when making players into moderators for the first time), there could at least be a period of public comment for staff to voice any concerns they have about a past moderator being reinstated. This goes along with the proposal to categorize the past moderators by whether they were passively/voluntarily or forcibly demodded. Should a past moderator who was forcibly demodded somehow slip through the cracks, the period for comment would allow staff members to raise issues concerning the past moderator. In addition, it would be nice if staff is given notice of inactive and past moderators who are reinstated. I recall one instance where I saw what I thought was a player flying on P. It turned out to be recently reinstated mod, who had previously been inactive since before I joined the servers (and thus was unfamiliar to me).

Right in the feels.

Is it true that we're the oldest free, public minecraft server? If so, I can add that to my pitch when I reply to [Wanted] threads in /r/mcservers.

Now that MCP has finally been updated to 1.7.10 (with the likelihood that many modded will also update their mods to 1.7.10), are you going to update Watson? I'm looking forward to finally ditching 1.7.2, and leaving behind the view distance bug (on SP) and being able to take a proper F2 screenshot of the extended chat screen.

I'll go through the /r/mcservers sub occasionally, and reply to the "Wanted" posts if I think the PvE server (I'm not familiar enough with the nuances of C and S to do the same for them) meets the requester's requirements. Others could do the same. It's a way to keep the MCPublic servers on people's minds without violating the frequency of posting rules on that sub.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. You kids these days have no appreciation of the classics.

Unbanned. Welcome back, and please obey the rules.

Hello Waldt. Spazzing out and/or lag are not excuses for breaking blocks you should not have broken. Additionally, if you did unintentionally and accidentally break any blocks, you should have notified someone immediately. You broke sugar cane blocks that were clearly not part of naturally grown sugar cane, and absconded with the ill-gotten loot. And not just one player-made tower, but five. http://imgur.com/a/aeFyN I'm setting a ban length of one day. Please reply after 12 pm EDT pm, April 19th, stating that you have read the rules at nerd.nu/rules, and that you agree to abide by the rules from this day forward. -sansapants

Unbanned. Welcome back.