Sapphric

Unbanned. Welcome back. Please re-read the rules and be careful what you build this time. :D

Unfortunately, an update a while back caused problems with non-rectangular portals, where you'd spawn in underground and suffocate. That's why we can only have rectangular, obsidian portals now. If we could do custom ones again, we absolutely would.

You'll be unbanned once your other account, McKnightly, is unbanned. The previous appeal was closed due to inactivity, please make another appeal under that name. https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/3857-mcknightly-geb/

I'm not speaking for the other Padmins here, but these are my thoughts on the matter. As far as I'm concerned, unless the grinder is a special, one-of-a-kind one like a creeper or slime spawner, then the drops should absolutely be completely, or mostly-completely publicly accessible. But for other grinders, like your run-of-the-mill zombie or skeleton grinders, there's so many of them that if those are completely private, who really cares? As for iron/guardian grinders, I personally feel if someone is going to go through the effort to build one, they deserve to get the vast majority of the output. There are plenty other temples that can be made into grinders, and iron grinders are similarly easy to build. As buzzie said, the main problem I have with limiting the amount of drops the builder can keep for themselves is that they have a right to do what they want with their build, provided it follows the server rules. If they don't want other people potentially AFKing at their private build 24/7, then they shouldn't be required to facilitate them by giving up half of their grinder's output. As long as there's a way to at least get SOMETHING from it, I have no issue, as there are other grinders that can be used. Sure keeping most of it may be a bit of a dick move, but it's not like guardian grinders are scarce.

How does it make you feel that Memphis will soon have as many SEC wins as Auburn?

Thread locked by request.

I feel I should attempt to address some of your concerns, specifically the ones to do with P. We have moderators to help players with things that are impossible for them to do manually, like escape a hole in a protected region, or get their builds protected or water flowed. Mods aren’t there to help with things people can do, but don’t feel like doing, like digging a horse out of a hole in an unprotected area, or helping them find their way out of a ravine. Feel free to point out examples of people complaining about that in the meeting recording, available here. Most of the discussion was about various issues such as how we’re handling land claims (which is a new thing and we’re still working out the kinks, so the feedback was encouraged) and things people can do to help reduce lag on the server (don’t keep large numbers of mobs/villagers, limit autofarms, etc.) We also discussed things players would like to see on the servers, all of which we took note of and are considering. The rules are extensive because players have always found ways to fuck over other players, and the rules are amended to prevent that. We got rid of the “don’t be a dick” rule as an overarching one because everyone complained that it was “too subjective” and that “the mods are abusing it”. We can’t have it both ways. Part of the big problem with that is people see “don’t be a dick”, but have different interpretations of what “being a dick” means. That’s why we have so many rules that spell out, quite plainly, exactly what “being a dick” is. As for there being too many rule signs for people to read, yes, we know. We’re changing that starting with next rev. If we ignore those people, we get more threads like this one complaining that we don’t listen to people’s concerns. We used to moderate chat more heavily, and after complaints about being too strict about that, we relaxed a bit about it. We added an /ignore command for people to ignore people who are trolling, and we will still step in if chat is getting too out of hand. If you have any examples of super excessive trolling, please feel free to send them to one of us so we can address it. In the recent PvE Community Meeting, players actually commended us on how well chat has been moderated this rev. We don’t allow political discussion in global chat because it has almost always turned into a flamewar in the past. We do allow political discussion in clanchats because they require players to opt-in to them by joining manually. That’s why we ask people to take divisive or spammy topics to clanchats, to free up global chat for other things. It’s hardly our fault if you weren’t paying attention to the forums.

Unbanned! Welcome back!

Unbanned.

I would only want villager protections if it's just preventing damage from players. Environmental and mob kills should still be possible. It IS player vs. environment, after all.

PvP bans on P are always one month.

You were banned for causing a zombie pigman to attack another player. It killed them, then proceeded to kill yourself and two other players. Logs show that at least the first one was intentional. 2015-09-18 16:34:33 | FatherSouth lost connection: Disconnected 2015-09-18 16:34:33 | FatherSouth left the game. 2015-09-18 16:34:35 | [KitchenSink] [drops] dnynumberone, 1xDIAMOND_SWORD:17(FIRE_ASPECT:2), 45xGRILLED_PORK:0, 1xCHAINMAIL_LEGGINGS:55(DURABILITY:1,PROTECTION_PROJECTILE:2) 2015-09-18 16:34:35 | dnynumberone was stabbed by Zombie Pigman with a gold sword 2015-09-18 16:35:00 | FatherSouth logged in with entity id 154845 at ([world]-315.72703469534986, 63.0, 976.8630727839158) 2015-09-18 16:35:03 | [KitchenSink] [drops] FatherSouth 2015-09-18 16:35:03 | Zombie Pigman sought revenge and murdered FatherSouth with a gold sword You logged off standing next to the AFK player two seconds before the pigman arrived there, killing him. You then logged back on and got killed in the same spot. Why did you punch a pigman next to an AFK player, or lead the pigman toward an AFK player before logging off, if not to cause their death? The proper course of action would have been to either kill the pigman before it could cause any damage, or lead it away from other players. You are banned for one month. Please make a new appeal no sooner than Oct. 23, 2015 to be unbanned.

Hi, FatherSouth, thanks for appealing. Just posting here to let you know I've seen this and will reply shortly. Ban information: Ban for FatherSouth on c.nerd.nu for Illegal PvP on P. Please appeal at nerd.nu/appeal by Sapphric on 2015-09-22T20:43:54.446 (no more bans, no notes)

My planned inactivity is over, and I'm back in the Padmin seat. \o/

But how do we determine that? Anyone can say "I died because lag", but there's no way for us to know if thats true or if they're either mistaken or outright lying. Better solution is to just work on fixing the lag, which the techs are already working on.

We can also find a time to work with the European mods.

First off, if you want us to take your suggestions seriously, being rude and sarcastic isn't going to help. Secondly, we're not restarting the rev. The revision is going just fine. Player numbers are down from the first week, yes. But as a long-time player, you should already know that this always happens. Literally every rev. It's not through any fault of ours, it's just a fact that the start of the rev is the most popular time, and after a week or three the player count levels off to 50-60. As for the lag, it's being worked on. The techs are actively looking for solutions, and I know some of the plugins are being rewritten from scratch to make them work better. These things take time. Coding a new plugin from scratch isn't something you can always do in a day, especially with real-life commitments interfering. But nuking the rev and starting over? That's a terrible idea. It won't fix any of the issues you are complaining about, and all it will do is piss off everyone else.

Moderators are trained to identify builds that qualify for protection, but we can't lay out exactly what constitutes a protectable build. This is because in a game like Minecraft, with literally infinite possibilities, it's impossible to objectively say what should or should not be protected. This is why protection is usually subjective; that said, mods are taught what kind of builds should qualify. For your two examples, I would maybe have protected the first one, as it seems relatively finished/complete. But I would not have protected the second one. We only protect finished builds, or builds that are incomplete, but have shown a considerable amount of progress towards completion. Low-quality, hastily-built structures are not usually protected because of people abusing protections in the past in order to get essentially empty land protected.

Also this:

That's how it was done last time. Did absolutely nothing to stop tons of people who had never played on our server before asking "CAN I GRIEF ON THIS SERVER COOL" then continuing to do so after the new rev launched. Or the people constantly modreq'ing people who were griefing their builds, then getting upset at the mods for doing nothing about it.

" he asked, as a crazed madman jumped out of the shadows talking nonsense. Suddenly...

We've done it before. I think the reason it's never been done since is because it caused some drama from people who didn't realize the map had been saved, and people joining the server in time for the new rev walked in on a burning hellscape, it looked like a griefer-friendly server and we don't want to look like that. But we'll discuss it, might be different if we do it again.

Just want to reply here real quick to answer your questions and explain why the rule is written the way it is. I'm typing this on my phone, so I apologize for any typos, autocorrect has some sort of vendetta against me. An unauthorized edit is when you edit someone else's build without their permission. This is the definition of grief. When a player places blocks, they have the right to not have those blocks removed or changed without their permission. It's their build, they can have it look however they want. The way we usually ask towns to request protection is the exact same way we ask for protection for any build. Mark out the borders with blocks in the corners and make a modreq asking for protection. This is not a guarantee that it will be protected, however. We are not going to protect empty land. We may make a smaller region than the one requested, that only covers areas that have been built up, and the region can always be expanded later once the town or build has expanded. The reason we don't protect empty land, as we stated in the other thread, and as is stated in the rules, is because protections are there to prevent people from griefing builds, not constructing them in the first place. Empty land is fair game to build on (with a few exceptions, such as intentionally building too close to someone's already existing build), and having empty land already protected just makes it more difficult for players to find a place to build. The reason this is under staff discretion is because it is simply impossible to have a protection guideline that covers every and all possibilities in a game like this, which as you say below, has limitless possibilities. We’ve looked into just about any solution to this that you could think of and its just simply not possible. Terraforming in particular is a tricky one that we’ve debated on for months. It is sometimes difficult to tell if an area has been terraformed at all, let alone enough to justifiably call it a build. For example, I've turned down modreqs to protect an area where the only edits at all were someone cutting down trees. That isn't a build, that's empty land. Now, mods and admins do use their discretion to decide if builds are going to be protected, but we train each and every mod how to do so properly. Mods know what should and should not be protected. If you ever have reason to believe a mod is unfairly denying your build protection, feel free to ask an admin to check. By all means, go ahead and do so. In fact, we encourage players to do so. But again, if the area marked by the fence is empty or unbuilt, it won't be protected. We protect BUILDS, not LAND. Empty land is not a build. I understand your frustration, really I do. We have dealt with complaints about this for years. But we have to be fair and equal to all players, not just the loudest ones. Protecting empty land for someone to use in the future just restricts land that people who want to build NOW. There is no way to know if the land is going to ever be used, and no one wants to see huge tracts of land in prime locations stand empty for months on end. The best and simplest way to avoid that problem is to just not do it. I understand that some people may feel hard done by that, but I assure you we’re not singling anybody out. You are more than welcome to create the poll, but do realize that not everyone who plays on P frequents the forum or the subreddit. Indeed, most people who play on P don't even care about any of this, they just want to play blocks. As I said above, we have to be fair to everyone, not merely the minority that frequents the forum. So a poll result either way isn't going to be indicative of the will of the majority, just those that are the loudest. See SilverSunset’s post above. As I said in one of my replies in the other thread, towns already govern themselves, including the ability to remove people from their towns. But as for removing their builds themselves, that can (and has on multiple occasions) lead to people being kicked out and their build removed simply because a mayor thinks it looks bad. It's still that player’s build, and they can build it how they want. If a mayor is concerned about players not sticking to the town’s theme or aesthetic, I'd say it's their responsibility to make sure their citizens know and follow it. There was a situation just recently in Rev 14, where a town member was kicked, and then their build was modreq’d for removal. Since the player was still active, they were told to sort it out between each other, which they did. They discussed it and came to an amicable solution, and the build was taken down. That's the best way to handle it. You don't need to just rip the build down, or immediately modreq for removal. Most of the time, just talking to the player is enough to get them to make changes you want. If a player isn't active anymore, mayors can modreq the build for removal. We’re working on a formal policy on abandoned builds, and we'll have more details soon.

I typed all that out to clear up the confusion you seem to have about our policies. I'm not sure what else I can say, since you seem determined to ignore my and Silver's points. We've explained multiple times now why the policies are the way they are, and you keep ignoring it, saying "if things were done they way they used to be..." Guess what? That's not how we do it anymore, and I have yet to see any convincing argument as to why that should change. I don't work a lot, seriously nothing you've implied is a lot of work. And in the cases where it is a bit of work, I'm okay with it because I enjoy it. I like helping people and running this server. If I didn't like doing work I never would have accepted the invitation to become an admin in the first place. I don't know why you keep insisting that I want or care if my (already small) workload is reduced. The problem I have with "giving the players what they want" is two-fold. One, you and your friends are the only ones who have asked for this, which leads me to think you have your own interests at heart and that any concern for the community is merely a way to get us to agree with you. Secondly, giving "the players" what "they" want is not always a good thing when what "they" supposedly want is going to likely erode the experience for other players.

The rules aren't in place arbitrarily, or to deliberately inconvenience people who want to build towns. They are there to protect everyone who plays on our server, whether they're part of a large town or building by themselves in the wilderness. The reason we don't let players remove unwanted or abandoned builds is because it is simply grief. If the situation was reversed, and someone destroyed your house because it was "in their way," you'd be angry as hell and would immediately modreq it for grief (and you'd be right). So if you want a build removed, make a modreq and we'll look into removing it for you. It's very straightforward: you cannot edit someone else's build without their permission. I don't care if it's "derp" or not; one man's derp is another man's dream home. Everyone has a right to not have their build destroyed by other people, simply because they don't like it. I've been very firm and consistent on this point since I became an admin. I can't speak to what the policies were back in the days when you played here, but this has been the policy for at least two years before I joined staff, let alone became an admin. It doesn't matter what the policy was then, this is what it is now, and that's what we're going to enforce. I'm also not quite sure why you decided to post a complaint about our long-standing policies under the guise of caring for our "enormous" workload. Everything you've said thus far in this thread seems much more about reducing work for yourself, than for the mods. You don't want to have to deal with the "tedious" process of placing a modreq and waiting. You don't want to have to build something to get an area protected, because then mods would have to make the region. You don't want to have to wait for water to be flowed because "oh no, the mods will have to fulfill my modreq now, despite it taking literally ten seconds." If our workload was a problem, we would take steps to reduce it. But changing the rules because they're inconvenient for you isn't how we would do it. To respond to phillippassmore about land claiming, as I wrote above, we don't protect empty land. Regions are put in place on builds to prevent grief, but building on empty land isn't grief. This is why we only protect builds. But if you want to claim land, go ahead and do it: place a block border and signs. Bam, it's claimed. But we're not responsible for keeping the claim for you. It's up to the players who place the border to deal with any disputes that arise in areas they haven't built in yet. Unbuilt land is fair game, but a border and signs in almost all cases will prevent people from building there. And if someone does build in an area you've marked off, talking to the builder is usually more than enough. You can always elevate the issue to an admin, who will be more than happy to handle land dispute issues, if other attempts have failed. We do generally take borders and such into account when dealing with land disputes.