I think it is time to drop the "reddit" affiliation

[cdmrtbeok]

TLDR - Reddit isn't what it used to be and neither are these public minecraft servers. It is bad for our reputation and may be counter productive to what we want out of these servers. We don't have to get rid of the subreddit either.

 

First off what the hell are we even called? MCPublic? Reddit Public? nerd.nu? I heard a lot that we should advertise yet we don't even have a name lol. The worst part about it is that nerd.nu is definitely the best one of the bunch and the least used. This is a star domain and it should be the name of the places. The header here should say

 

NERD.NU MINECRAFT PUBLIC SERVERS

 

I mean LOOK at that! It is glorious. It has the domain name to connect right in the title and it is descriptive of what we are. It also has Minecraft and public in a row so the subreddit name MCPUBLIC makes sense. At no point in this do I mean to get rid of that by the way just pivot focus.

 

Also lets face it. Reddit sucks.

 

Reddit is a much larger website than it used to be and is very different then when these servers were started. There used to be a real idea of "redditor" when the place was smaller. I don't know if I even considered myself one then. At the time yuo would get downvoted to hell for using racial slurs or hostile language. Needless to say this is no longer the case. Our policies are in direct conflict with the more current redditor culture. 

 

Lets think about that culture also. They are a bunch of ass holes and trolls. Exactly the kind of people we should have less of playing blocks with us. There are more people who think SJWs are a bigger problem than racists these days. Maybe I am the odd one out here but like I think the fact that this server isn't a bunch of assholes saying racist slurs and acting a fool is the only reason that I play this game and I know for a long time a lot of people agreed with that. It filters out the people who can't control themselves too, that isn't a bad thing. 

 

 

[Magnyus]

I agree wholeheartedly, aside from the subreddit, we don't officially have any serious affiliation with Reddit. Even more so now that policy changes are quite opposing to the website itself. I feel that it is definitely time to drop Reddit and re-brand ourselves independently.

 

Doing so would be a great step in the right direction to becoming a true community that spans across different games. And it would give us the freedom to use other websites aside from Reddit to attract more players. That being said we won't be erasing our history with Reddit, because it is how we began. But we'd be moving beyond it.

 

Obviously, there's something about Nerd that keeps us here despite the constant antagonising, a lot of us have made friends here and shared plenty of laughs, and as Minecraft becomes more and more irrelevant to many of us, we don't want that sense of community to go away with it.

[d3north]

The fact we arent "officially" the server for /r/minecraft is that mods in it are against an "official" server, but as AllNaturalx is top mod and creator of r/minecraft and r/mcpublic, the sidebar links stays.

[bmx20042004]

The fact we arent "officially" the server for /r/minecraft is that mods in it are against an "official" server, but as AllNaturalx is top mod and creator of r/minecraft and r/mcpublic, the sidebar links stays.

Wait we aren't the "official" server of reddit?!?!?

[d3north]

Wait we aren't the "official" server of reddit?!?!?

 

Most mods (those who dont play on nerd) dont like an official server being chosen, and have done almost everything they can to get it unaffiliated with it

[tobylane]

The fact we arent "officially" the server for /r/minecraft is that mods in it are against an "official" server, but as AllNaturalx is top mod and creator of r/minecraft and r/mcpublic, the sidebar links stays.

 

So for the time being we are still the official servers of reddit. A low number of people come into IRC and C and say they are from /r/minecraft, I suspect you can get better data from P.

 

I don't see the harm that you see, but I see slurs/fools from the community. The worst of anywhere acts the same.

[Guest]

I personally dislike the fact that nerd.nu is considered the "official" reddit servers, mainly due to the fact there are lots of non-redditors playing here, and (like tebok said) there is a massive personality difference between redditors and most people who play here. I think that reasonably these servers should be called something else (nerd.nu public minecraft servers, mcpublic minecraft servers, etc), rather than the "official reddit minecraft servers".

 

I also think it wouldn't be a bad thing for nerd's admins to have the link on r/minecraft to be taken down, as it's really not a main source of advertising (you'd get more advertising by advertising on some random advertising site - nobody clicks that link), and to try to establish a more unattached reddit server network.

 

tl;dr: I don't think debranding "reddit" from our name is a bad idea, and I also think taking advantage of nerd.nu (being a domain that you can remember easily) wouldn't be a bad thing either.

[ultrahub]

I also think it wouldn't be a bad thing for nerd's admins to have the link on r/minecraft to be taken down, as it's really not a main source of advertising (you'd get more advertising by advertising on some random advertising site - nobody clicks that link), and to try to establish a more unattached reddit server network.

 

I disagree with this, that link is how I found these servers, and in turn I brought several friends to these servers.

 

For the most part I would agree that we should drift away from Reddit, but I personally feel that we would end up losing more than we would gain. I think we could advertise as Nerd.nu (a reddit server). or something like that, keeping the Reddit side of things on the low end in comparison to the Nerd.nu assets, which should be more prominent.

[schererererer]

I also think it wouldn't be a bad thing for nerd's admins to have the link on r/minecraft to be taken down, as it's really not a main source of advertising (you'd get more advertising by advertising on some random advertising site - nobody clicks that link), and to try to establish a more unattached reddit server network.

Personal thoughts: I have to disagree with that - that link is how I found nerd.nu and I know for a fact the same is true for many others, though I'm not sure to what degree, and it's most likely that will see diminishing returns. This is the main reason I wouldn't want to drop all Reddit affiliation, so perhaps if we randomly survey new joiners on where they heard of us, we could get a better idea of how effective this has been.

On the subject of culture, the real major difference is that reddit as a platform is exceedingly permissive in the name of 'free speech', while we have a rigorous approach to removing racism, homophobia, etc. from public view. Reddit has become a bit more representative of the general public in many respects, but with the social inconveniences of anonymity. I'm sure those elements are still present in our community, just quieter. With the continuation of our policy, any reddit users that join should expect and be expected to follow it, and indeed be much more likely to agree with it than the average reddit user.

[djt832]

I don't think its necessary to drop our affiliation with reddit. Its how I found these servers, and I really doubt its having a negative effect on us.

 

However, cdmr is right. If we are going to advertise, we need a solid brand name, not three. My vote is with nerd.nu as well.

[Guest]

Personal thoughts: I have to disagree with that - that link is how I found nerd.nu and I know for a fact the same is true for many others, though I'm not sure to what degree, and it's most likely that will see diminishing returns. This is the main reason I wouldn't want to drop all Reddit affiliation, so perhaps if we randomly survey new joiners on where they heard of us, we could get a better idea of how effective this has been.

 

I do agree with a majority of your thoughts here (and since I may have read the original thread differently - I originally thought we were choosing one or the other), it'd make more sense to keep the reddit affiliation. It wouldn't be a bad thing to survey users to see where they found nerd.nu from though, since it could assist us in our advertising efforts.

[Magnyus]

It'd be nice to encourage newcomers to take a welcoming survey that covers our bases and extracts a little out of them in efforts to improve. The only problem with surveys is that many other servers use surveys to provide incentives to players which is something we shy away from. How about a server announcement that says whether or not said player had taken the survey so other can thank/congratulate them for it? That way they'll feel that much more welcomed.

[roastnewt]

Splitting hairs here, but we're the offical servers of /r/minecraft, not the offical servers of Reddit.  We also might want to be careful using reddit branding and the "snoo" alien, because no one from Advance Publications has ever given us permission to use them.

[Guest Former Staff]

This topic has come up before, possibly by yourself CmdrTebok and we haven't drawn a reasonable sense of direction on where to go. Currently we're advertised in several ways (as a collective group of servers) such as Reddit Minecraft Servers (on /r/mcpublic & /r/minecraft), Nerd.nu on our website homepage, Reddit Public Minecraft on our website banners, IRC takes you to #redditmc whereas mumble brings you to mumble.nerd.nu. There may be others too.

 

Just from this topic alone, I can see that our own community is divided in how we are perceived, or should be perceived.

 

• 'Brand ourselves Nerd.nu Minecraft Public Servers.'
• 'Drop reddit affiliation.'
• 'Don't drop reddit affiliation.'
• 'Make a more prominent use of the Nerd.nu domain name.'
• 'Reddit is culturally different from our servers.'
• Are we the official server of reddit or minecraft? (sidebar reads: Subreddit for the official Reddit Creative, Survival, PvE and Chaos servers for Minecraft. and we are advertised as ' Official Reddit Minecraft servers ' on /r/minecraft).

To move forward, instead of focusing on a name to begin with how about we decide who we are in a greater sense of our community?

 

This would mean deciding on whether we want to be a minecraft community or grow into a multi-game community.

 

Instead of deciding whether we should be affiliated with reddit, we could decide on where we feel is best to advertise a minecraft / multi-game community and if reddit falls into this plan.

 

Who are we and who do we want to be? If we figure this out then the name should follow.

 

 

[Aeoxic]

This topic has come up before, possibly by yourself CmdrTebok and we haven't drawn a reasonable sense of direction on where to go. Currently we're advertised in several ways (as a collective group of servers) such as Reddit Minecraft Servers (on /r/mcpublic & /r/minecraft), Nerd.nu on our website homepage, Reddit Public Minecraft on our website banners, IRC takes you to #redditmc whereas mumble brings you to mumble.nerd.nu. There may be others too.

 

Just from this topic alone, I can see that our own community is divided in how we are perceived, or should be perceived.

 

• 'Brand ourselves Nerd.nu Minecraft Public Servers.'
• 'Drop reddit affiliation.'
• 'Don't drop reddit affiliation.'
• 'Make a more prominent use of the Nerd.nu domain name.'
• 'Reddit is culturally different from our servers.'
• Are we the official server of reddit or minecraft? (sidebar reads: Subreddit for the official Reddit Creative, Survival, PvE and Chaos servers for Minecraft. and we are advertised as ' Official Reddit Minecraft servers ' on /r/minecraft).

To move forward, instead of focusing on a name to begin with how about we decide who we are in a greater sense of our community?

 

This would mean deciding on whether we want to be a minecraft community or grow into a multi-game community.

 

Instead of deciding whether we should be affiliated with reddit, we could decide on where we feel is best to advertise a minecraft / multi-game community and if reddit falls into this plan.

 

Who are we and who do we want to be? If we figure this out then the name should follow.

 

I think the desired intention is to remove both reddit (and, by way of another topic started by Deaygo, "Minecraft") from the focal point. Keep (and use) the subreddit, but try and move everything name-wise to "NerdNu".

 

One important point is that this community never was the 'official' reddit servers. reddit inc. as an entity never had any affiliation with the servers, nor do any reddit staff volunteer on them. Calling it the 'official reddit Minecraft server' is a misnomer. At best, they are the "official unofficial" servers because they were one of the first, the first on reddit, and owned by the guy who is top mod in /r/Minecraft.

[cdmrtbeok]

Look, I just think pretending to be the official server of something that you are not is kind of wannabe and pathetic. The active mods of r/minecraft don't play here or like us. No one in our community posts there and certainly not content from our servers. Some people might have come here by a link years ago but the r/mcservers ads are better. We have no affiliation with advance publications as Aeoxic said. Also the term "redditor" is basically meaningless now. When these servers started it actually was kind of a thing but now it has been diluted. The merits of that is debatable and I am sure people can exposit paragraphs on it in disagreement but that is how I see it.  I will reserve making a value judgement on this. 

 

But we have something better then "Reddit" that we need to focus on and grow. Picking a name is an easy part of that and something that people can come up with better ideas if they have them. I am not in the administration of these servers in any way this is just some dudes opinion who plays here. But if we can't come to an agreement on what our name is and our focus then I don't know what to say.

 

 

 

 

This would mean deciding on whether we want to be a minecraft community or grow into a multi-game community.

 

Instead of deciding whether we should be affiliated with reddit, we could decide on where we feel is best to advertise a minecraft / multi-game community and if reddit falls into this plan.

 

Who are we and who do we want to be? If we figure this out then the name should follow.

 

I disagree strongly. How are we going to advertise at all without a name? Clearly enough of us want to play multiple games that we don't need to discuss this any more enough is enough. We all agree that we need to advertise. I mean these are probably the only things people here agree on. 

 

I know what this is and this is what I mean we have that is better than reddit:

 

a wide breadth of gaming services (game hosting, wiki, voip, forums moderation, chatrooms, subreddit...), provided for free (with actually voluntary donors), with a focus on community.

 

On an aside the provided for free and willing donors is huge. I enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) playing a lot here and donated plenty already but like I am in a much better place and I am willing and able to contribute what I can. I know there are others out there but you know it has to be worth donating to and it has to have a focus or else I would feel like I am wasting it. This is a deeper issue then the ongoing scuffles about survival or the usual cycles of internet politics on administration. That all doesn't matter to the bigger picture. As my boss would say "we should focus on our core strengths" 

Edited December 23, 2014 by cdmrtbeok

[jchance]

I've spoken to several other admins about rebranding to "Nerd.nu" but no decision has been made.

 

I will make it a point to add it to the admin meeting agenda for this month to bring up, discuss, and come to a decision about dropping the reddit affiliation.

[saberfysh]

I agree we have a very confusing server identity at the moment. I've taken a habit to calling the place Reddit Public Servers and referring to P as Reddit PVE, but the truth is we have many callsigns:

• Our subreddit is /r/MCPublic
• Our webpage, forum, mumble server and server domains are at nerd.nu
• Our plugin repository on Github is called Nerdnu
• Our map archives are at mcp-dl.com
• Our wiki is www.redditpublic.com.

Whoever decided on parking that many domains for one minecraft server group is probably bleeding more money and causing more confusion than they need to. Consolidation of everything into one domain would fix this. The question is which one to use. IMO, the most static one is our subreddit name MCPublic, which is being linked by /r/Minecraft and is also not easy to completely transfer to another subreddit like /r/nerdnu, should we go that direction.

 

Just like scher and ultrahub, I found these servers via the sidebar on /r/Minecraft, which at the moment is clearly written as "Official Reddit Minecraft Servers" and leads to our subreddit at /r/mcpublic. Yet it is clear that no Reddit staff/employees/moderators manage or fund this server, so we do have legitimate reasons to rebrand. At this point we're more like the "Unofficial Reddit Public server." Were we official, we'd probably be using www.redditpublic.com a lot more and inherit the subreddit's rules.

 

Still, this one sidebar link was my earliest understanding of the server, and is a major factor to consider should we debrand ourselves entirely. We would have to notify the creator of /r/minecraft to remove or modify the link, migrate the outstanding resources to a single domain, then figure out a way to re-advertise.

 

EDIT: typos

Edited January 15, 2015 by saberfysh

[tobylane]

I think of official as meaning something much weaker than a lot of naysayers do. Also, we're the official servers of the minecraft subreddit, as decided by their head mod. That phrase doesn't claim any sort of status given by Conde Nest (reddit's owners).

 

The subreddit is the one thing that can't be as easily redirected as the others. Domains, for websites and ingame, can redirect.

[cdmrtbeok]

Calling it MCPublic is fine however we are really lucky to have an awesome domain name like nerd.nu. It is more memorable and will be MUCH easier to brand and sell t-shirts with or whatever. Furthermore we want to expand past Minecraft.

 

Also my second point about reddit stands. That place sucks. People there are jeks and not who we should be trying to attract.

 

r/minecraft is not driving that much traffic. If we were going to name the servers based on where we get traffic from then we should be called the unofficial AVO/youtube servers.

[TheRandomnatrix]

r/minecraft is not driving that much traffic. If we were going to name the servers based on where we get traffic from then we should be called the unofficial AVO/youtube servers.

Sounds good. Free icecream should attract people. :D

 

I agree though about branding. I personally like nerd.nu and mcpublic equally as much. "nerd.nu" would probably be better if we want to start expanding to other games though. I think if we wanted to integrate it properly we'd call ourselves nerd.nu as an overarching name, then our minecraft servers, or at least our subreddit be 'mcpublic'. Dropping the reddit affiliation is in our best interest imo. Reddit is just one of many mediums we use at this point. All the other names should be rectified to 'nerd.nu' as that's where most of our domains are.

[d3north]

We would have to notify the creator of /r/minecraft to remove or modify the link

 

Originally we WERE /r/Minecraft, but moved due to people's confusion. The guy who made /r/Minecraft probably wont be turning us out yet, as he is the one who actually owns us, AllNaturalx.

[tobylane]

r/minecraft is not driving that much traffic.

 

Could we do some fact finding on this? I'm not sure where the claim comes from. Look in this topic alone for reason to doubt it.

[cdmrtbeok]

Tobylane, ask people on the server who are new where they have came from. Unlike yourself I have done this. No one new comes from that link in my experience. We can't ever find out difinitively because we do not have google analytics.

 

This is totally besides the point though. The mods there don't like us. AllnaturalX, a friend of mine, is only top mod there because he came up with it and no one can do anything about it. He doesn't actively moderate or participate in that community or ours. Even if we pick up some stragglers through a tiny link on a sidebar in a smallish subreddit it doesn't matter, those people aren't going to grow the server in the way we want to.

 

It is stupid pretending to be the official server of something that is there because of happanstance. We can grow something awesome here but hanging on to stupid things like a link and a dumbass name will not help.

[TornadoHorse]

Tobylane, ask people on the server who are new where they have came from. Unlike yourself I have done this. No one new comes from that link in my experience. We can't ever find out difinitively because we do not have google analytics.

 

Over the Christmas period there was a peak in survival's player numbers so I asked the majority of them where they came from. I asked about 4 different people, but they each had groups of friends with them ranging from 1-4 others. 3 of the 4 players said they found out about the server from /r/minecraft. I initially doubted it and thought they were getting it confused with /r/mcservers but a couple of them confirmed it was the minecraft subreddit. Either way, we still get some joins from having our link in the sidebar and unless we're switching to some other form of advertisement I don't think we should abandon this small, free source of advertisement.

 

I am, however, all for deciding on one single name for the servers to go by to make everything feel less disjointed.