Mumberthrax

Around December 2014 I made a post regarding an overhaul of nerd.nu's ban policy in the admin-only subforum. Around the same time I also made a post about a "mass ban amnesty" event in the same admins-only subforum. I do not have links to these since they are in a section of the forums that is not visible to me, and I have since cleaned my web browsing history. I don't remember all of the ideas that I suggested in the posts, nor am I certain that I would still today support them or the sentiments i expressed, and I would like to see them again as well as the discussions from other admins in response to them at the time. Please consider moving these two posts/discussions to the public archives subforum. Thank you. (Link to previous request, just in case it is relevant: https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/3228-foia-requests/?p=28566)

You can lock them with as much granularity as you can with locking chests and other things with LWC. So you can grant permission to specific people, to region members, to the public, you can make someone an "admin" of the locked bed so they can add/remove access to other people, etc.

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nerd.nu has a rule against disruptive arguments/discussions in global chat. There is a sort of unspoken rule on PvE that "politics" and "religion" are banned topics except in clanchat, relegated to the #politics channel or similar. Is this in fact a policy that staff are supposed to enforce? If so, are there any guidelines or specific criteria for determining whether a given topic or phrase is okay or not?

Iron grinders: I haven't tried to ever make an iron grinder so I'm probably not qualified to respond on this. As someone who has mooched off of the iron grinder at the end a few times this revision, I found it convenient for filling out a beacon pyramid. The nether: This nether looks really familiar but I can't quite place my finger on where I've seen it before. I think it's cool. Custom flora: Also cool. Definitely an improvement over vanilla forests. Sad that I can't grow my own but still quite neat. The little dirt platfoms that sometimes float under them is mildly immersion-breaking but its a minuscule cost for the overall aesthetic benefit. Portals: I'm probably also not qualified to respond on this one, since I've only used the portal at spawn a couple of times when I needed wither skulls for a beacon. I don't really even know how many portals there are. I do know the spawn one is closest to me, at around 1500 meters away or something. Maybe if I go traveling later I would have more useful input. Ore distributions: Seems fine to me. Glowstone and clay deposits continue to be useful. MapWorld: Haven't really used this. Didn't realize it existed until i was exploring spawn and hit the warp sign. It's a really neat idea and seems like it could be pretty useful. Maybe make it easier for people to see how to get back out? I was worried I'd be trapped there when i teleported to someone's plot out of curiosity on my first visit. Terrain: Seems fine. Worldpainted mountains are neat, if a bit uniform. One suggestion is to make sure the biomes in worldpainted areas are not all weird and wonky, and also to fill in the air gaps under them... there are quite a few unnatural narrow and deep pits underneath the volcano, for instance. Also, there seems to be a strange lack of ores and 1.8 stones near the center of the volcano at the same y-level that they should be generating. Not a big deal, just a minor thing. Also an unusual long band of dirt that seems out of place compared to vanilla dirt clusters. Not really a problem per se, just something odd. *shrug* If the event/head admins don't choose to use it on my 1.8 extra hard mode survival event idea, I would like to suggest checking out the "biome bundle" terraincontrol config collection that has recently been published. https://www.reddit.com/r/biomebundle/. I'd like very much to see this on my event idea, but I suspect that no admins are interested in putting it on the servers - so maybe at least the padmins can use the terrain part. Spawn: Make the exit from spawn more apparent. i had to use optifine's zoom function to read some of the rule signs and things. Maybe don't try to cram so much information into them. I don't know what these challenges are. I guess I should go back to spawn and hunt around for them. Custom mobs: These are novel. Annoying. I was disappointed that I got nothing for my ten minutes spent fighting the zombie one. I am thankful they do not spawn any more frequently. I have avoided the creeper one, but I have heard it reported that it is a completely unbalanced fight. Maybe if the extra hard mobs were relegated to specific places or circumstances, like only if the player is heavily armed or has a certain xp level, or visits large custom dungeons, then it would be better. But I think that there needs to be a greater incentive for casual players to engage them in combat. Regarding balance, the creeper, for instance, is incredibly fast - there is no way to escape it I have heard, and unless you are wearing blast protection then no surviving it. The zombie i fought was really a pain. The *only* reason i was able to defeat it was because despite being given godlike amounts of hit points, his AI is still stupidly boring and cannot understand how to climb 3 blocks up to hit me, nor does he know how to fight dogs. Ten minutes sitting atop a nerdpole waiting for my dog to kill him is not fun. It is a novel, memorable experience that adds variety to the server! but it was not particularly fun - especially when I got nothing in return for the incident. /help: fantastic change. nice work. Please make "/help protection" more succinct, and put the tl;dr version on the very first page. that or use some indentation or paragraphs or bullet points or underlines or keyword bolding or something.

if any event admins or techadmins or head admins have any interest in this at all, I put together a 1.8 server with most of the plugins, and tweaked the configs a little bit so they work ok together. only plugins i didn't get on my list were citadel and enchantism (edit: and orebfuscator) because i couldn't find updated binaries for them and didn't feel like re-learning how to compile plugins. Basically, the work is done it just needs to be tossed onto a server. I wanted to make a cool map for it using the realistic terrain generation mod but had some trouble getting 1.8 blocks and ocean monuments to generate properly. I think a fun alternative would be the upcoming biome bundle, a free open set of terraincontrol configs. alternatively, just a plain jane vanilla map. I was thinking about making a short little image album putting this long essay i wrote into a more visual format so its easier for people to see and understand. edit: well, i say the work is done - but its just the basics. i didn't write any fancy teleport signs in CH yet, but that wouldn't take long. just don't want to invest the time in re-learning CH if this won't be used. I also didn't set up any kind of control-point plugins since it really isn't essential to the basic idea.

If I recall correctly, the original concern about it persisting was that people might gang up on someone in global chat and mass /ignore them when they don't deserve to be shunned in that way - that is, shitty behavior ruining what was meant to be a tool to defend against shitty behavior.

To be clear, this wasn't intended to be a replacement for S. Its just several plugins I think would be fun - especially the combination of the buffed tnt, nerfed mining, and rare large ore veins. I like grief prevention a lot. It's dead simple, requires no moderator intervention at all, has super simple instructions for new players, and it rewards people who play for longer. The teleport is kind of essential if you are trapped in someone else's claim. The point isn't to make this a hardcore pvp be-a-dick event. It's to enable pvp, have environmental challenges to overcome, have a reliable self-serve plugin to protect your build and gear, and have fun fighting monsters and exploring. As for animals, if they're in a protected claim them I'm pretty sure they are automatically protected by the grief prevention plugin, therefore there would be no need for any rules about not killing other people's animals.

I agree that being spammed with prompts while travelling might get annoying. Maybe it should be an opt-in sort of deal? Already regions can send messages to players entering them, right? like "welcome to hurpdurp city!", or is that only on P? Maybe an alternative to getting a resourcepack prompt in the normal full-screen gui is to get a message in chat that says "this region has a suggested texture pack - click here to set it up!" or " - type /texturepack to set it up!". or "If you want to stop being spammed with these messages, type /nothanks and you won't receive a prompt again until you enable texture pack prompting with /gibmedapretties" Such commands to disable the prompts would only affect the prompting from the plugin, and would not affect your minecraft client's settings regarding texture packs for events and such. Zomise, do you at least think the basic idea is appealing, and just want a refined implementation, or does the whole idea seem terrible?

@c45y: So with the issue of collecting users IP addresses, it seems one solution would be for any resource pack which isn't hosted on a pre-approved file-hosting service (dropbox, mediafire, etc. etc.) could be re-hosted by a moderator/admin. Obviously already we're looking at making the packs require moderator approval, so the use of the flag would be by staff directly - enabling, as you say, strict and clear criteria to be applied. Would you be willing to direct me to any specific lines/functions in the plugin code that pose a security risk? I'm a bit of a noob programmer, and not really experienced with java, so it is somewhat opaque what you are referring to in some of your comments about it opening files in browsers or using local files. I was under the impression that the GUI prompt for resource/texture pack downloads does not open up web browsers, but that the minecraft client itself downloads and sets up the pack without the player needing to do anything. Is this not accurate? What security risks do the packs themselves potentially hold for players that staff would need advanced technical skills to identify? Beyond checking for pixelated genitals or swastikas in a zip file, I can't really think of anything - but I may be underestimating the power of minecraft resource packs.

I could be mistaken, but as far as I am aware the resource packs include only media and no executable code which could pose a threat to a system. But yeah, moderator approval ought to catch anything that might be an issue.

Perhaps. There are a few reasons this seems to me, at least for the moment, to be an unappealing approach. I don't really want to depend on someone else to judge whether my feelings about the things another person types are justified or not. I don't want to create additional work/drama for staff when the solution could be automated. I don't want to try to censor someone that other people don't mind joking around with, because I know different people can tolerate different amounts of bullshit, what may be distressing and really grating for one person may be absolutely nothing to many more people. I suppose for me an alternative is to find a way to use client mods to filter messages of specific people, but not everyone playing is going to want to deal with that. Mostly I just don't want to come across as whining or making a fuss. I will say that having the luxury of /ignore is wonderful. As a staff member I was never able to use it and now that I'm just a regular player it's great. Needing to /ignore someone multiple times is a small price to pay for the benefits of it, its just a mild annoyance to start to see bullshit pop up in global chat before /ignore-ing them, or ironically to have to retype their names every time I don't want to think about them. :P

I'm getting tired of having to /ignore the same dumbases every time. Alternatively, have some sort of automated periodic report in /mb of top /ignored users, so moderators are aware if someone is pissing people off.

/cprivate, /cmodify, /cpublic, /cremove, /cinfo should be available for use on beds.

I appreciate the support. I think it would be kind of fun. I think a big reason there isn't much response to this one in particular is because of how goddamned long the post is. Needs more pictures and less words. :P

The plugin places no restrictions on what resource pack is used. you can take a look at the code to see how it works - I am not even a Java programmer and it's pretty easy to read it. Therefore it would likely be something moderators would need to approve, where a region owner could modreq the pack be added for their region.

Many minecraft players love their texture/resource packs. A different texture pack can completely change the overall feel of a build. Currently if a player wanted to encourage use of a specific texture pack when viewing their build, they would have to give visitors a notification via signs or a message upon entering the WG region, at which time players have to follow a url (or in the case of signs type the url manually), download the pack, put it in the right folder, activate it, then open the game back up. Contrast this with custom texture packs for a server, which gives the player a prompt upon login which allows the client to automatically download, install, and enable the pack while connected to the server. It's a very nice interface. This plugin allows worldguard region owners to set a flag which prompts players entering the region to automatically download/install a texture pack just as a server has the option to do. http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/worldguard-texture-pack-flag/ The plugin itself is very simple, as far as I can tell. I don't know if it works on the latest spigot, haven't tested it. https://github.com/mewin/WGResourcePackFlag When I suggested this a while back to sirtacoface and jchance when they were CAdmins the one issue brought up was that it might be annoying to constantly get these prompts upon entering regions. Given the simplicity of the plugin, I do not believe it would take very much to add in the ability for players to disable the prompts for themselves. Edit: clarification, if i recall correctly, it will only prompt you to download the pack - once you have it downloaded it would automatically switch to the pack upon entering a region with the flag set without prompting. Again, if this seems like something users ought to have greater control over, it does not seem that sticking a few lines in the code for such preference options would be too difficult. That's the meat of the request. Here's why I think this would be extra cool: texture packs that use unused data values of blocks in order to add additional textures to the game, expanding the palette of options for creative builders. The conquest texture pack is one such pack that has done this: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/resource-packs/1242763-conquest-wip-weekly-updates The first half of this video demonstrates a little bit of what can be done with this sort of resource pack: (this is the plugin he's using that lets players use a stick to change the data values, though worldedit could also be used - it would be slightly more tedious but it could be done: http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/monster-blocks/) This video also shows a neat build that uses the features of the pack, and at time index 16:51 shows what the build looks without those features. The second cart he made looks ok, but the first one just looks weird without the pack enabled: Please let me know what you think of this idea. I don't play on C much at all, and I'm not a very good builder, but I've been stunned by some of the things I've seen C players create, and I would be very excited to see what they could do with the ability to prompt and automatically switch to specific packs for a more seamless integration of resource packs into the game.

So I guess all that's really needed is a convenient way to push the suggestions from that commandhelper persistence database that /suggestion-box is using to the forums or the subreddit or something. I did a little bit of poking around and it looks like the forum software has an API, but I'm not sure how it works yet. https://community.invisionpower.com/4guides/developing-plugins-and-applications/rest-api/ This seems to be for version 4 of the forum software, so it might not be useful for the version nerd is using. Commandhelper has the ability to sent data through http easily enough if its more convenient to use the suggestion script itself rather than some external script. http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/CommandHelper/Staged/API/http_request#Description There's also the reddit API if you want to go that route. suggestions could be piped into a subreddit pretty easily with just a few lines of CH. could be done upon creation of the suggestion, or upon approval by an admin. May want to do something like /r/ideasformcpublic or /r/mcpublicsuggestions or something rather than the regular sub. I like the forums idea best, but I'm having a hard time finding documentation on API stuff for version 3.4.5. So yeah, this seems very feasible to me as a noob programmer. If you want I can try and cook up a version to shove stuff into a subreddit if the techs are busy with other things.

:D I'm glad that someone is finding it useful. I think it was dumbo that requested it long ago for having multiple rulebooks for different subjects or something on C, but when i finally made it I don't think anyone ended up actually using it. :P I wish mojang would improve books, but they probably will not. Monospace font, bigger pages, higher page limit... little things that would make a big difference.

just found this: https://github.com/NerdNu/nerdCH/blob/master/LocalPackages/SuggestionBox/commands.msa Looks like a lot of the work is already done.

(I am overly proud of my first CH accomplishment and should probably be ignored) https://github.com/NerdNu/nerdCH/pull/24 TL;DR: /book-list lets players see a list of written books available to them. /book <bookname> gives them a copy of the book. Several handy administrative commands exist for adding new books. This could be nice for somewhat added immersion, rather than clicking a url and loading a web browser up to view the journals. This ch script is already running on P (and C as well afaik) and is the mechanism behind the /rulebook command which was used last revision, so no techadmins need be involved in setting it up since its already there.

http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceengineers/ Space Engineers recently won the Indie Game of the Year award: http://www.indiedb.com/groups/2015-indie-of-the-year-awards/features/players-choice-indie-of-the-year-2015 It could probably be described as being like Minecraft in Space. Some concerns: it isn't free. Currently the game costs $25 USD It is still under heavy development in open Alpha, on steam's Early Access list. New features are added weekly, and sometimes these come with bugs that break things. Multiplayer is not quite as stable as singleplayer (though the primary development focus now that planets have been added is improving multiplayer stability) Things sometimes bug out for unexpected reasons. Rotors, pistons, and landing gear have a history of occasionally causing explosions if not used cautiously. Planets can be fps heavy, and worlds with planets can only be played on computers that support directx11 There are not many admin tools to protect against griefing presently. Despite these issues, it is a very fun game, and there are tons of mods which enhance the game adding new aesthetics and novel gameplay elements (they are automatically downloaded when connecting to a server using them, so no hassle for players). I would recommend creating a world without planets, so that those with computers that only manage dx9 can play, so that there are fewer issues like low fps and other quirks that Keen is still working out relating to planets. I would recommend using SE Server Extender and several of the plugins available for it that manage cleanup of unused debris. SEToolbox is also a very useful administrative utility. The game has both a creative mode and survival mode. I play mostly in survival, but creative is fun too for trying out interesting designs. I mentioned mods above - for an idea of what's out there, here's a list of some i play with which I feel enhance the game: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=583224819 and here's a collection I've cobbled together of interesting aesthetic mods: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=583259352 I feel like the kind of person who plays Minecraft would be much more likely to play a voxel game about spaceships and asteroid mining than playing a first person shooter like cs:go. If we want to go with games that are not free like Team Fortress, Space Engineers seems like a reasonable choice.