Suggestions for Security, Permissions, and Griefers

[Aypop]

In this thread I want to address a few suggestions on items on C and griefing. I'd like to further discussion into the comments, possibly with more suggestions. I'd rather this thread be more about tools to measure and aid with identifying griefing rather than banning policy. 
 
I do have some scruples/suggestions on banned items and permissions regarding those items. On C especially, there are some items and blocks that seem to be unable to be interacted with, placed, or even dropped (which makes no sense to disable on C, to be honest). I even notified the Cadmins that you could technically place your own flowing water and lava using /i 8 and /i 10 (that issue has since been fixed). 
 
The following, when using the /i command, don't give anything in inventory, despite giving a confirming message. I'm not sure if this is intended or a deal with minecraft itself. I personally don't think they're necessary, but it's a nice list to have. 
 
/i 34 (piston extension)
/i 55 (redstone wire)
/i 59 (wheat crops) (which is weird because you can get carrots and potato crops with /i 141 and /i142 respectively)
/i 132 (tripwire)
/i 149 (inactive comparator)
/i 150 (active comparator)
 

 

These are items are banned from placing, but cannot be dropped from inventory with Q for some reason. I'd like to be able to drop these items easily without having to drop them out of my inventory. I don't see much sense in not being able to drop these. 
 
/i 90 (nether portal block)
/i 119 (end portal block)
/i 8 Flowing water
/i 9 Still water
/i 10 Flowing lava
/i 11 Still lava
 
 

 

 
These are items that are not allowed to be placed. I'd like to note that hopper minecarts and command block minecarts (/i 422) are currently allowed to be placed on rails while these aren't. I'd also like to note that Command Blocks are disabled on the server, and can only be enabled by changing the server config files. 
 
Chest Minecart
Furnace Minecart
Command Block
 
 

 

 

 

These are items that "spawn" entities upon usage that quickly dissipate, but are banned for some reason. Keep in mind that while these are banned, splash potions are allowed to be thrown (and are thrown) all the time. It's not logically consistent to ban these two items when they can be replaced with splash potions readily.
 
Snowball
Fire Charge
 

 

 

When someone right clicks anywhere with a TNT minecart, they are immediately kicked to the lobby. I don't have any qualms about this for server security's sake, but I would like input from a mod/admin on if/how TNT minecarts can be used to circumvent worldguard among other things. TNT minecarts also cannot be dropped with Q, which like I said doesn't make much sense. 
 

 

 

Additionally, brewing stands are not allowed to be interacted with, but can be placed. Hoppers cannot be placed on brewing stands either. Brewing potions on C seems a bit unnecessary, but creating a demonstration for use on P  or S, or just demonstrating how redstone works, should be allowed. 
 
Example:
 

 

 

(Note on the last image: the hopper immediately disappeared after the screenshot was taken. I had to get the timing just right)

 

Essentially what I want to do by addressing this is work towards a more logically consistent banning of items. 
 
 
--INSERT SEGUE HERE--
 
After playing on the Creative and PvE servers a lot, I'm glad that we have competent admins, moderators, and community members that quickly point out griefing, let the proper authorities know of the situation, have the offending party kicked or banned after collecting evidence, and rollback malicious edits. 
 
I've noticed that on especially C, new players are often characterized as suspicious by other players. While it's nice for our player base to have solidarity against griefing and spam, we might be alienating potentially constructive players.
 
I propose to evaluate this threat with a weekly metric to potentially use on all the servers: use the server logs to evaluate how many new players are banned within 4 hours (or some arbitrary length of time) of their joining the server. You could get this by checking the time the griefer joined and what time he was banned, and evaluating if it was within the arbitrary time window.

 

This will indicate how many people specifically join the server to grief, and separates those cases of regulars being banned; I do contend, however, that there will be some people who misunderstand the server rules from the beginning and unfortunately are banned as a result, though this is a VERY rare case. This metric can be applied for each server, and it can be used to gauge the usefulness and effectiveness of ad campaigns on server listing sites as well. I'd very much like a tech admin to comment about the possibility and efficacy of such a method. 

 

I'd also like input on whether such data should be available to the public or kept secret to the administration or even just the techs and heads.
 
Like I said at the top, I'd very much like to see more constructive suggestions on these topics and related topics. Also, if I missed any information, please feel free to correct me. 

Edited August 24, 2014 by Aypop

[SirTacoface]

Wow this was a very informative post and you point out very good things. 

 

 

 

These are items that "spawn" entities upon usage that quickly dissipate, but are banned for some reason. Keep in mind that while these are banned, splash potions are allowed to be thrown (and are thrown) all the time. It's not logically consistent to ban these two items when they can be replaced with splash potions readily.

 

Snowball

Fire Charge

 

This one is the one that really sticks out to me, is there a reason why these are banned in the first place? I can't see them causing any damage, at least any more than splash pots would...

Edited August 23, 2014 by SirTacoface

[Difficult1]

Well, active red stone and portal blocks can cause lag, and flowing water and lava can be used for grief.

C players tend to be suspicious about newer players because of 3 reasons.

1. C is griefed a lot and on a server where you don't need tools and food to get griefing, people pick out creative servers. It's quicker to grief them.

2. Newer players to c have tended to be a lot younger in the past few revs, so some people assume they will not be mature in following or reading the rules.

3. No one ever reads the rules, sure they cover a ton, but when someone sees 75 pages in a book I doubt they will bother.

[Aypop]

Well, active red stone and portal blocks can cause lag, and flowing water and lava can be used for grief.

 

For these, I completely agree; these items when placed can cause legitimate harm to other people's experiences on the server.

 

I'm not suggesting we revert that AT ALL.

 

For some reason, when trying to get these items like flowing water and portal blocks out of your inventory with Q, you get a weird error message. I'm proposing getting rid of that protocol because it's extraneous; it servers literally no purpose. 

 

 

C players tend to be suspicious about newer players because of 3 reasons.

1. C is griefed a lot and on a server where you don't need tools and food to get griefing, people pick out creative servers. It's quicker to grief them.

 

I agree with this. It's a fact of having a creative server. 

 

 

2. Newer players to c have tended to be a lot younger in the past few revs, so some people assume they will not be mature in following or reading the rules.

 

I also agree with this, but I think that bias shows up more in conversing with some players or telling them to modreq for something.

 

 

3. No one ever reads the rules, sure they cover a ton, but when someone sees 75 pages in a book I doubt they will bother.

I do agree that rule literacy should be a server priority, but primarily I'm concerned about malicious players that join the servers knowing full well that what they're doing (destroying other people's builds, spamming chat, spamming blocks) is, if not against server rules, then a grand nuisance to our playerbase. Instead of using anecdotes and personal experience (which I'm not discounting by the way), I'd like to be able to quantify such griefing players in a way that's understandable and helpful to the administration as well as the general playerbase (if the admins allow it). 

[Difficult1]

I think a few things I don't see a need for would be things similar to not being able to access potion stands.

Also, it would be great if the rules where eather summed up better or where shorter and more general, maybe more people would read them.

[jllmprrt]

I think a few things I don't see a need for would be things similar to not being able to access potion stands.

Also, it would be great if the rules where eather summed up better or where shorter and more general, maybe more people would read them.

Most of the rules could be summarized very easily. I remember first logging on, going to the rules page, and reading that the page was super long, definitely was a turn off.

If someone could come up with maybe a more general summary of the rules, I would be happy

[Aypop]

Rules

 

Universal Gameplay

• No hacking, griefing, or game/bug exploits.
• No NSFW or otherwise offensive builds.
• No lag machines or mechanisms (grinders, redstone, etc).

Universal Community

• Be respectful and civil towards your fellow players. 
• No harassment or hate speech in any form (chat, skins, etc).
• No moderator or admin impersonation.
• No doxxing or alt doxxing.
• No ban evasion using alt accounts.
• No sharing of illegal content.
• No excessive trolling or baiting comments/actions.
• No spamming chat or commands.

PvE

• No player killing or player trapping of any kind, barring PvP arenas.
• Keep map open for exploration. Exceptions include villagers, grinder areas, and animal farms.

 

Survival

• No using login as a function of PvP.
• No using any teleportation (portals, etc) to escape PvP situations. 

 

Chaos

• Griefing is allowed.
• Universal Community rules still apply. 

 

Banning Policy

 

• Violations of rules can lead to mutes, kicks, and/or bans on any and all nerd nu services including the minecraft servers, forums, and mumble server. A warning may or not be given. 
• You can receive an official ban sentence term upon being banned by appealing at nerd.nu/appeal. Upon your ban sentence expiring, you can appeal once again to be allowed back on to nerd nu services.
• You are responsible for your account. When an account has been associated rule-breaking, all owners of the account should bear the brunt of the consequences. 
• Ban evasion using alts most often results in the alts being permanently banned. 

 

 

Note that each server has their own list of banned items.

Not included are useful commands that can enhance your experience on the servers such as /modreq and /lsd.

For further elaborations on rules, consult nerd.nu/rules

 

 

 

There I've done it. 

Edited February 24, 2015 by Aypop

[jchance]

Aypop, I'll address your questions, and the tech questions I don't have answers for I'll note below and do my best to get you an answer:

 

The following, when using the /i command, don't give anything in inventory, despite giving a confirming message. I'm not sure if this is intended or a deal with minecraft itself. I personally don't think they're necessary, but it's a nice list to have. 
 
/i 34 (piston extension)
/i 55 (redstone wire)
/i 59 (wheat crops) (which is weird because you can get carrots and potato crops with /i 141 and /i142 respectively)
/i 132 (tripwire)
/i 149 (inactive comparator)
/i 150 (active comparator)

 

 

 I don't really know the reason why you can't place these other than possibly the redstone devices maybe causing lag.   I will ask about the specific block IDs you mention above and if we can get them enabled.  I'm fairly certain that for items like /i 34 they just disappear when placed anyway, or don't function correctly if they do stick, which is why they're disabled.

 

These are items are banned from placing, but cannot be dropped from inventory with Q for some reason. I'd like to be able to drop these items easily without having to drop them out of my inventory. I don't see much sense in not being able to drop these. 
 
/i 90 (nether portal block)
/i 119 (end portal block)
/i 8 Flowing water
/i 9 Still water
/i 10 Flowing lava
/i 11 Still lava

 

 

 The rules that prevent dropping these items are left over from back in the day when you could actually drop items on C.  I'm sure when they changed the config to prevent dropping anything they just didn't search around and remove these item ID specific rules from the various configs.   That, or they are part of the standard base config that gets used on all Nerd servers and C just inherits it.  

 

I will ask the tech admins if we can remove these rules. 

 

These are items that are not allowed to be placed. I'd like to note that hopper minecarts and command block minecarts (/i 422) are currently allowed to be placed on rails while these aren't. I'd also like to note that Command Blocks are disabled on the server, and can only be enabled by changing the server config files. 
 
Chest Minecart
Furnace Minecart
Command Block

 

 

 Again, I'll ask the tech admins about this.   More than likely some config just needs to be updated. 

 

Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, these tech issues are pretty minor compared to the other things that tech admins do, which is why they've been overlooked.   These are not "blockers" to gameplay in any way, but I'll do my best to get you an answer.

 

These are items that "spawn" entities upon usage that quickly dissipate, but are banned for some reason. Keep in mind that while these are banned, splash potions are allowed to be thrown (and are thrown) all the time. It's not logically consistent to ban these two items when they can be replaced with splash potions readily.
 
Snowball
Fire Charge

 

 

More than likely these were banned because they were used to annoy people (much like the throwing potions are now) and their usage can't really be tracked.   For example, if you did a modreq saying "jchance spammed me with snowballs for 4 hours" there is no way, as a mod or admin, we can log in and really see that to my knowledge.   All we could really do is see you complaining in chat (like "Stop throwing snowballs at me jchancefucker!") but with creative mode we wouldn't even see them do "/i snowball" since they can grab it from the inventory menu.

 

The reason potions are probably not banned, and I am just guessing here, is for PVP enabled areas since splash potions do have a legitimate use in survival mode.    

 

It is the consensus of cadmins that unbanning more projectiles, including snowballs, eggs (without the chickens), and fishing rods is a good idea.  I believe we asked the techs to earlier, but it looks like it's still disabled so I'll do my best to bring it to their attention.  I'm all for giving people things and then punishing the people that use them the wrong way, not banning them from everyone.

 

When someone right clicks anywhere with a TNT minecart, they are immediately kicked to the lobby. I don't have any qualms about this for server security's sake, but I would like input from a mod/admin on if/how TNT minecarts can be used to circumvent worldguard among other things. TNT minecarts also cannot be dropped with Q, which like I said doesn't make much sense. 

 

 

 I don't really understand why TNT minecarts have this behavior-  if they are going to be prevented from being placed like other banned or modreq items then they should act the same way.   I'll ask the techs if we can get this behavior consistent with other non-placeable items.

 

Additionally, brewing stands are not allowed to be interacted with, but can be placed. Hoppers cannot be placed on brewing stands either. Brewing potions on C seems a bit unnecessary, but creating a demonstration for use on P  or S, or just demonstrating how redstone works, should be allowed. 

 

 

 This has already been brought up among Cadmins that we should make brewing stands active. I don't know if there was a technical or lag issue on it or what, but  I'll see where we're at on that.

 

After playing on the Creative and PvE servers a lot, I'm glad that we have competent admins, moderators, and community members that quickly point out griefing, let the proper authorities know of the situation, have the offending party kicked or banned after collecting evidence, and rollback malicious edits. 
 
I've noticed that on especially C, new players are often characterized as suspicious by other players. While it's nice for our player base to have solidarity against griefing and spam, we might be alienating potentially constructive players.

 

 

 

It is my personal opinion (and not necessarily that of the admin team in general) that we treat everyone who joins C like a criminal before they join.   This includes:

 

- 37 signs of rules before they even leave the spawn room

- 77 page rulebook, that even though it is mostly instructions for modreqs, etc., is just too daunting.

- "Banned Items" that are not really that- they're just items you need to ask a mod for help with

- Immediately TP'ing to and following around players who are new, waiting for them to grief

- Banning items that "could" let people bug others instead of just punishing the people that use them to do so (like snowballs)

 

It is my firm belief that this is a game.  It's just fucking blocks!   I think we should stop treating everyone like they're from a grief team and start making C a more welcoming, happy place where everyone can get rid of the drama and just play digital legos.  It has been my campaign since I was made cadmin to shift how we treat players.  

 

We've had extensive conversations about planning the next rev, and I've spoken to the other cadmins about simplifying spawn.   I want to remove the rule lawyering rules, reducing 37 rule signs to 7, like this:

 

 

I also want to reduce the rulebook to just those rules, a link to the full rules on the website, and a page that says "For more helpful commands and how to modreq, do /commandbook" or some similar command and get the other 60 pages of how to modreq, how to get protection, other server commands, etc.

 

Likewise, "banned" items is negative and makes us seem like overlord assholes IMO.   To correct the negative overtones,  I want to simplify that section by not listing actual banned items (because you'll know they're banned if you try to place them, natch) and making the "mod placed items" more friendly, like this:

 

 

 

I think these are worthwhile changes that will change the way everyone who joins our server will see us- not as a stuffy, 100 rule server where farting wrong might get you banned but instead as what we are- a nice, drama free and relaxed place to play blocks.    This is how C should be seen.   Other servers have complicated social issues and forum arguments- C should not.   Again, its just fucking blocks.

 

I have also been addressing (non-mod) players who follow new people that join the server and treat them like griefers the minute they join.   I hate this practice-  players are not equipped to assess if a new player is a griefer, and thats not your job anyway.   Mods and admins, if they feel the threat is real, can look up player histories, vanish and follow them without creeping them out, and just generally handle this better than a player following another around.  We also get nocheat warnings and select block placement warnings that let us know if a player is up to no good without even following them.

 

This practice of vigilante new player stalking really needs to stop- I've been on when one new player joins and 3 "regulars" start shadowing them until they get creeped out and just leave.

 

I know that I personally haven't always been the best about this, but I have also been trying to warn more players before taking action for breaking rules.  Generally, I'm trying to be a nicer admin than I was a mod because I think that the players on C deserve someone who cares about a fun play environment more than they care about being a police officer.  Other mods and admins have been doing the same, with warnings and kicks coming before bans.

 

I propose to evaluate this threat with a weekly metric to potentially use on all the servers: use the server logs to evaluate how many new players are banned within 4 hours (or some arbitrary length of time) of their joining the server. You could get this by checking the time the griefer joined and what time he was banned, and evaluating if it was within the arbitrary time window.

 

This will indicate how many people specifically join the server to grief, and separates those cases of regulars being banned; I do contend, however, that there will be some people who misunderstand the server rules from the beginning and unfortunately are banned as a result, though this is a VERY rare case. This metric can be applied for each server, and it can be used to gauge the usefulness and effectiveness of ad campaigns on server listing sites as well. I'd very much like a tech admin to comment about the possibility and efficacy of such a method. 

 

I'd also like input on whether such data should be available to the public or kept secret to the administration or even just the techs and heads.

 

 

I personally don't see the benefit of sharing grief data with the community but other than that I have no comment on this.   Mods and admins already have the tools they need to effectively do their jobs, with C being the most laid back and easy to moderate server in nerd.nu.

[jchance]

Aypop:

 

With help from TheAcademician I was able to get answers to your questions and get some changes made:

 

Unspawnables:

 

First, these block IDs are blocked by minecraft itself, not by the server:

 

/i 34 (piston extension)
/i 55 (redstone wire)
/i 59 (wheat crops) (which is weird because you can get carrots and potato crops with /i 141 and /i142 respectively)
/i 132 (tripwire)
/i 149 (inactive comparator)
/i 150 (active comparator)

 

You can test this yourself by going in to single player and trying them, like we did:

 

 

Undropables:

 

For the next group of items you couldn't drop: 

 

/i 90 (nether portal block)
/i 119 (end portal block)
/i 8 Flowing water
/i 9 Still water
/i 10 Flowing lava
/i 11 Still lava

 

Aca removed the restriction and on the Rev 27 dev server they're droppable.  Since you can't really drop anything on C this is a safe change.  This change will be active when we roll over to the new rev in October.

 

Banned Projectiles (and carts, and brewing stands):

 

For the banned projectiles and other items,  these will be usable on the next rev:

 

Snowballs

Fire Charges

Fishing Poles

Brewing Stands

Furnace minecarts

Hopper Minecarts

Chest Minecarts

 

We're still looking at fireworks to see if we can enable those.   I want to, but sever / stress issues might block that.  We'll announce it when we know for sure.

 

Kick for TNT minecarts:

 

Still looking at this one.  Aca is trying to find the rule that does the kick to lobby and remove it, but it and command block carts will remain banned.

 

So I think that about covers what you were asking there.

 

I bugged TheAcademician for an hour going through all this crap, so when you see her online thank her!  You guys should build a statue in her honor.

[Aypop]

I just want to say thanks for addressing my concerns over these small tech issues. I'm glad the administration is receptive to these kind of requests. And I'll definitely get started on that Aca statue 

[WayneByNumbers]

I would just like to point out one quibble; hopper minecarts.  I recall one incident where a lag machine using hopper carts took down the C server (the server, not people's clients) repeatedly.  How many carts were involved?  Two.

 

I don't fully understand how that worked, and I know hoppers in general are risky (I myself took C down for a bit with a bugged hopper, still don't know how), but the carts in question had been placed by a griefer, so there must be some kind of control players can have over that kind of thing.  I'd vote for keeping those unplaceable, unless of course they can be made reliable.

 

Another small cart issue: minecarts of all kinds are despawned on C every 2 minutes.  That would make many uses of chest and furnace carts pointless, while removing that server behavior would open possible exploits.  Can that be resolved somehow?

[jchance]

Wayne,

 

I talked to the techs and they feel that the automatic removal every 2 minutes is enough.  I'm sure if it becomes a problem they'll be removed again.