Narissis

This can't be stressed enough. I get the impression that some players want the staff to behave like lawyers, doing everything down to the letter of every rule every time and always being completely and utterly professional. Then, in the same breath, they advocate for a more relaxed community. These two things are at odds; the more rigid, formal, and uniform the staff become, the more stifling the community will become, and things would wind up even more tense because it would be like playing a game under a dictatorship. I'm not saying that the staff shouldn't strive for objectivity and consistency in how they enforce the rules, but they should be friends and fellow players first, and staff second. That way, they remain part of the community instead of deepening a rift by which they isolate themselves into a staff clique, which is exactly what people keep complaining about.

It's especially enigmatic because a lot of the explanations can't account for everything. For instance, UNP brought up the possibility of network issues. This would certainly account for the disconnects and general lag, but not things like mob spawning issues or actual server crashes.

The catch here is that there's no reason to assume that the player count is actually responsible. With more players comes more of everything else that can lag or crash the server: more mobs, more items, more entities, more block edits...

One of my pet peeves is people who misconstrue an opinion on aesthetic tastes as an imposition of those tastes upon others. Nobody is trying to dictate what somebody can build with, they're just pointing out that they have a distaste for cobblestone-exclusive builds.

What I'd like to know is why it's assumed that not implementing a player's ideas is the result of dismissing that player out-of-hand because of who they are. Maybe the idea is simply not a good one, or a good one that can't be implemented for some reason or another. This does raise the issue of how one can tell what reasons the staff have for turning down an idea. Maybe we should have an official suggestions forum where topics are held open until the staff can provide a specific response explaining whether or not the idea will be implemented, and why or why not. I don't really see the "us vs. them". Maybe that's because I'm on the outside looking in, but from my perspective, without having taken a side, what I see is more like "a bunch of confrontational jerks vs. mods who are tired of their shit" with a light sprinkling of some staff unprofessionalism... which is to be expected when the staff is a volunteer force on an online gaming community. Maybe the solution is to try to work with the staff instead of insulting, belittling, and discrediting them. I get that staff need to be called out for making mistakes, but there are tactful ways to do that.

I mean, let's be honest here. It doesn't take a genius to tell the difference between using the word in an honest sense to describe a homosexual person with no ill intent, and using it in a derogatory or provocative manner. In the unlikely event that the usage is so ambiguous that common sense can't determine one way or the other, then the player should be gently reminded to be careful how they use the word. If the player becomes more appropriate with it, then no harm done. If they react to the reminder by getting immature with it, then give them the usual kick. And if they log back in and become a total shitbag, then ban. This whole discussion is really making a mountain out of a molehill. There is no reasonable way to remove mod judgement from the equation. The best thing we can do is make sure that the appropriate response is well understood by all the mods.

I don't understand why people are making the argument that it's an assumption. When players are thought of that way, it's due to their behaviour; it's not as though there's some kind of conspiracy to label anybody for no legitimate reason.

Ultimately, there's no removing staff judgement on this issue because the alternatives would be zero-tolerance or free-reign, either of which would be a disaster. A vocal minority can bitch and moan about the staff as much as they want; ultimately their job as staff is to make these kinds of decisions in addition to the gameplay services they provide. I mean, that's the entire meaning of the word 'moderate' for goodness' sake. For my part, all I'm saying is that the staff should be careful about how they approach the issue and not make any knee-jerk reactions unless the context is obviously negative. Judging by the full text of your post, I'd say that the due diligence was reasonable in this particular instance. Anyway, it's entirely possible that there's simply no solution for OP's dilemma. The problem is that we're dealing with an online community, which is a platform that naturally attracts abrasive and immature little shits with no internal checks or balances on their behaviour thanks to the mask of anonymity. The consequence of this is that the usage of the word 'gay' is in an immature and negative context more often than it isn't, which will of course lead to warnings and bans, which does create the impression that it's a taboo word even if it is context sensitive. If those kinds of people could grow up and learn some real words so their vocabulary of "I don't like that thing" is expanded beyond "that's gay", then the internet and the world at large would be much better places.

I think we could stand to dial back the sensitivity on the homophobia rule a little. Generally it's not too hard to determine if someone's actually using the terms in a negative fashion, and it's not right to kick someone for mentioning their sexuality in a mature way. Kicking gay people because they mention being gay is, as described by the OP of this thread, a complete contravention of the spirit of the rule. It's one thing if a player expresses discomfort at the topic of conversation and asks for it to be taken to private channels and it continues anyway. But it's quite another for Somebody to be immediately kicked just for identifying as gay simply because they used the word.

If I had to guess, Unce, I'd presume that yours might have been ruled out for being too large with details too fine to scale down properly, being of lower quality than the others with obvious aliasing artifacts, and for having a dickbutt in the middle. :P

I mean, churches are awesome structures with tons of architectural potential that are great fun to build... just no need to be specific about religions and start debates or flame wars.

And Dumbo will go down in Minecraft history as the creator of StandMaster9000™.

That's fair, but I'm not talking about people disagreeing with you. I'm talking about people respecting you. There's been a lot of conflation between the two in these threads. But it's entirely possible to disrespect someone and agree with them, or to respect them and disagree.

To expand on what Switchviewz said, because I know some people will probably argue about censorship and being told what they can and can't say and whatnot... There's a difference between censorship and poor taste. And while there are some things (including a few of the things Switch mentioned) that are bannable and could therefore be considered censorship, other things are stuff you can freely say, but that doesn't mean people are obligated to be okay with you saying it. Nobody is trying to tell you that you can't say what you want, provided it isn't a bannable word or phrase. But by the same token, you can't expect to use vitriolic or confrontational or excessively sarcastic (etc. etc.) language with no consequences, either. Before complaining about not being taken seriously, try communicating in a way that encourages other players to take you seriously. Of course, this does come with the disclaimer that everyone will react differently to different things. For instance, Switch doesn't care for the 'fuck you' signature but I don't mind it - it's in a cursive font and obviously mean to be taken lightly. Others might consider it an attempt at provocation, though. No one's saying you can't have a 'fuck you' signature, but you have to expect that it may cause some people to take you less seriously. The 'allahu akbar you fucking twat' signature, on the other hand, I don't really understand. It doesn't really work as a joke, and it's obviously not meant to be taken seriously... so what's the point? The impression I get from it is that there can be no purpose other than to invite a negative reaction from people. Again, I'm not going to tell people they can't have a certain signature. That's not my place. But I am going to see something like that and draw conclusions about the maturity (or lack thereof) of the person who owns it. You can accuse me of not having a 'thick enough skin' to ignore the signature, but the missing link there is that the signature doesn't offend me. What it does do is to provide a useful yardstick by which to gauge the kind of maturity I can expect from the player. The TL;DR here would be that using intentionally inciteful language doesn't have to be against the rules to be a bad idea, and that you can't put all the blame on another player for failing to overlook immaturity when you've made no effort to be mature and show the community a measure of civility.

People building ugly-as-shit derp-pillars up to my elevated rail lines. At least clean up after yourselves! Damn.

Looks like Speccy to me. https://www.piriform.com/speccy

Nowhere in jchance's post did he accuse Eehee of trolling. He did attempt to explain why some people continue to see Eehee as a troll, but he deliberately did not take a side. Now you're getting on jchance's case for something he did not do, because he brought up the fact that *some* people may do it in order to explain how he, as an administrator, cannot control the reactions of others.

I see what you did there.

I find it very interesting that there's so much conjecture in these staff critique threads about mods doing things because they "like" or "dislike" somebody, but if a mod/admin makes the same implication about a player, all of a sudden they're evil for it. It's almost as if nothing the staff ever does could possibly be satisfactory.

Since when?

That is one thing I've never understood. I've been an MMO gamer for years, and I see this behaviour in those games on a daily basis. Some people, for some reason, just have to shout from the rooftops when they ignore someone. It's petty and annoying and there's no benefit at all... just /ignore and move on. But I guess not everyone has the maturity for that. Getting back on-topic with the main line of conversation here, I just wanna say, Darkelmo, that your latest post is exactly the kind of thing I've been asking you for in all of these threads. :) I hope that the staff will think twice before they decide to cover anything up by removing that post - if these are the sorts of behaviours that are going on with staff 'behind the scenes' in Mumble, then they owe it to the community to be transparent about them, take responsibility, and enact some kind of disciplinary action against such problematic staff members. While I won't hesitate to defend staff against blanket statements and vague attacks, I also won't hesitate to demand something be done when there is evidence of wrongdoing on their part... especially when it contravenes the rules that they, themselves, expect the rest of the community to abide by. Leadership begins with example.

I built it in summer of 2013 so it's not the newest hotness, but here: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor CPU Cooler: NZXT HAVIK 140 90.3 CFM CPU Cooler Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Superclocked Video Card Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case Power Supply: NZXT HALE90 V2 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Full (32/64-bit) Other: Asus Xonar D2 Sound Card Other: LG Blu-Ray & DVD Drives Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-05 10:24 EST-0500 The Xonar D2 is a 7-year-old sound card; I took it out of my previous build. And I've got some custom sleeved cables in it to fit the whole black/white/gold/silver colour scheme.

Maybe I missed something here, but I don't think any of this has really been about "offensive" or "triggering" language. With the exception of the staunch rules against homophobia, this community is pretty lax about wording. Until someone goes too far, anyway, at which point the gentle nudges toward clanchats or PMs start to happen. :P I'm pretty sure the main issue is people showing outright hostility and confrontationalism toward others, not people using potentially offensive language. Has more to do with what's being expressed than with the language used to express it.

What if the logo had two pairs of glasses, one original pair and one "nu" pair?

It's... it's beautiful.