Suggestion: AKA Why are our servers so empty?

[zifnab06]

I'm going to preface this post with: I've been thinking about how to say this since last night without stepping on toes. It might not happen. Sorry. 

 

After following our ban appeal forum for a few months, I've noticed one huge pattern: New people get banned for their first *minor* offence. Oh, you didn't replant crops? 2-5 day ban, depending on the moderator. You killed a cow because you were in a protected area and couldn't get out without place a boat to jump on (one of my all time favorites)? 48 hours. Some sort of inappropriate langauge? Gone.

 

If I was looking for a server and I recieved a 24-48 hour ban (or longer) for something minor, like killing an animal (which, in vanilla minecraft is totally acceptable), or not replanting crops, or even because I used the wrong word and someone found it offensive, I wouldn't hesitate to leave and never bother coming back. I entirely understand banning for large infringements (Ie, you destroyed 1500 blocks of someone's creation just because you could, x-raying).

 

According to MCBouncer, we have had 4,356,056 connections since using it. Averaging roughly 1,000 connections per day. However, at the same time, we have roughly 95,000 bans (25 bans per page, ~3800 pages). I'm not going to bother figuring out how many bans this is per day, or how many connections/person (however, some of the more active users have a few thousand connections. I myself have 800ish, some of the staff are close to 7000). 

 

It might not be my place to say this, but i feel as though our system of "Ban for anything minor, they'll appeal if they want to come back" is actually quite damaging to this server, and this community. I however do not have the power to fix this, but I would like to make a suggestion (wanted or not):

 

Warn people. Use the note system built into MCBouncer to do so. Send them a mail in game, and place a note on their account stating "Minor crop grief, warned (date)". "Homophobia, warned it will not be tolerated again (date)". 

 

tl;dr: read it. 

 

Edit - I'd like to state I am not questioning our staff, but simply the guidelines that have been put in place for them to follow.

Edited June 12, 2013 by zifnab06

[MasterCommaThe]

Your suggestion is good, even from my perspective on C where language is tolerated less. A lot of this does happen in the background through PM's, but maybe more can happen. Roll-backs can happen anytime, and it is a good reminder that it is in the interest of keeping good players on the server to make sure we follow a due process they expect in a fairly moderated environment.

On C, I like to make use of the "5 minute ban", otherwise known as our jail, for offenses that are minor. I must admit, my most recently appealed ban resulted from me not using that system and would have been better served by it.

[Ozomahtlii]

It might not be my place to say this, but i feel as though our system of "Ban for anything minor, they'll appeal if they want to come back" is actually quite damaging to this server, and this community. I however do not have the power to fix this, but I would like to make a suggestion (wanted or not):

 

Warn people. Use the note system built into MCBouncer to do so. Send them a mail in game, and place a note on their account stating "Minor crop grief, warned (date)". "Homophobia, warned it will not be tolerated again (date)". 

 

If it is for minor griefing we do just place a note we do not ban right away, we only ban right away if it is mass griefing or if the player was warned for it.

Same for homophobia, unless someone starts spamming it in chat we usually either kick or mute and then add a note and warn him.

[zifnab06]

Maybe it needs to be talked to among the mods then. Not picking on anyone specifically, but:

 

https://nerd.nu/forum/index.php?/topic/339-fefe-miner-socarch26/

https://nerd.nu/forum/index.php?/topic/346-champhall-kisa-gitana/

https://nerd.nu/forum/index.php?/topic/293-mlgjuggalo666-brianherman/

https://nerd.nu/forum/index.php?/topic/244-pastaman00-tharine/

 

Those are just in the past week. (The boat/cow incident if anyone is curious is here: http://nerd.nu/archives/index.php?p=/discussion/19629/mattbird-socarch26. I'm probably biased, as I've known Mattbird for years)

 

I have a bookmark folder on my laptop containing bans that I felt after reading were for 'minor' issues, however that laptop is at home (and I am not). I understand I don't know 'everything' in most of these cases, but I believe it has been an issue. 

 

Thanks

Edited June 12, 2013 by zifnab06

[32ndFlava]

I don't really have anything to add, just that I agree with you that the 1 strike policy is a little extreme and should be done away with. I see it a LOT of times when people say "homophobic" things and are insta-banned. That to me is just ridiculous. Especially when the majority of the time when someone says something that could be considered homophobic it isn't meant to be homophobic, it's just used as slang. 

 

[Denevien]

If it is something that can be considered homophobic or racist, I immediately remove the player from the game. From past instances, muting and messaging them end up with them going "ok yeah, i whatever", and usually end up banned for it later. If players have to go through the appeal process (which I usually unban for right away, after they quote me the rule), I know they fully understand their wrongdoing and it won't happen again. Too many players try to blame it on "not knowing", but we put the rules at spawn, we have them all listed on an easy to find site (nerd.nu/rules). There are players who have been here for years who have never been banned. It really is not that hard to not get banned.

[SpiderMan]

I for one, blame the player.

 

If they considered reading the full rules page and wiki pages regarding block edits BEFORE joining the server, they would clearly see how the rules are laid out.

 

It doesn't matter if they might be "server hopping with friends to find a nice server with a friendly community to play on" or whatever, it is their responsibility to read ALL the rules so they don't get banned.

Edited June 12, 2013 by gsand

[SpiderMan]

I don't really have anything to add, just that I agree with you that the 1 strike policy is a little extreme and should be done away with. I see it a LOT of times when people say "homophobic" things and are insta-banned. That to me is just ridiculous. Especially when the majority of the time when someone says something that could be considered homophobic it isn't meant to be homophobic, it's just used as slang. 

 

The rules are very clear. It doesn't matter if it was "unintentional" or an "accident", the person still deserves the ban. Also, saying that they're "british" isn't an excuse.

http://www.redditpublic.com/wiki/Rules#Universal

[zifnab06]

I think I should sum up my post up top:

 

I think bans need to be fair, uniform, and not for mediocre mistakes (ie, crop griefing). We have a standard ban for x-raying, why not for any other offense?

 

 

edit - spelling

 

edit2 - unfixing edit1, it was correct

Edited June 12, 2013 by zifnab06

[Guest Former Staff]

We have a standard ban for x-raying, why not for any other offense?

 

To answer this as briefly as I can, while x-raying is a clear breach of the rules once it has been identified and then verified, other forms of rule breaches can have areas which are not so defined.

 

For example, there are people who may grief less than 100 blocks, another that may grief between 100 - 500 and a third catagory where people grief beyond the 500 marker. In the example of griefers in particular, we look into the constructive vs non-constructive edits. Were these people only on the servers to systematically destroy other people's creations and how far were they going with this.

 

Sometimes we catch them early in their griefing, and online. In these cases we can send a warning via message. A majority either ignore these messages or stop until they think they are not being watched. Some are using hacked clients.

 

Hopefully highlighting these areas of griefers alone helps to paint a picture of some of the factors we have to consider when banning and that while most ban appeals tend to be similar and in some cases use similar excuses for their grief, they are banned on a case-by-case basis.

 

----------------------------------

 

I like this discussion and I agree with the idea that we should try to ensure that we're not banning for the sake of banning, or making it easier for ourselves. We should only be banning where we need to and we need to promote more communication with people for warnings where appropriate / possible.

[Lord_Munkee]

gsand, can I point out, 95% of people do not and will not read rules, they are too long, and too boring. You should not penalize for quickly. Just warn and refer them to rules. When I was mod/admin, too many bans were givne out then for silly things, and from what people tell me now, it still happens and far too often. I think this is something that needs to be addressed, its one of the reasons the servers are so empty lately. nerd needs a serious overhaul. i feel zifnab is trying to address a situation here cos he/she clearly loves the servers, but the mods are just being defensive instead of discussing or listening to the players.

[Tharine]

I really welcome zifnab's post, as for some of us bans are something you handle so often that you can get caught up a bit in what you're doing and not realise that something might need changing. We have a lot of methods for contacting people prior to a ban, be it /msg, /mail, or even moving them over to jail (i'm not sure if PvE or Creative have jails, though) if they respond to neither. Issuing a /kick usually happens for griefers or players using some form of hacks that are caught in the act.

 

I've not really thought about it before, but you're right Lord_Munkee, the rules page is super long. I think we should probably look into reviewing our rules as a whole, and I know it's something we've been keen to do for Survival in particular for some time now. When it comes to new players, at the very minimum I expect them to have read and understood the rules at spawn. I wanted to make things a bit more descriptive when I wrote up the rules board for this revision's spawn, to make sure the rules were clearer, as well as not looking too boring. This is how the rules board at spawn currently looks, but I already have in mind from some suggestions for how we can improve that next revision (linking to nerd.nu/rules for client mods, for example, whilst it fits on a sign it's a bit of a hassle to navigate the actual webpage).

[c45y]

 
I think we just need more Australians.... ( Graph time is GMT+10 - So really midnight AU is the peak time )
 
Honestly, during peak times PvE is perfect, sitting exactly at a comfortable player limit. Not too little, not too much.
 
We have rules in place that suit the current community, those rules are what keep them here. We lose a bunch who come and think we are too strict, or don't understand that there are consequences to actions on the internet, and that will always happen. We could and should be more lenient on bans but that is not really the reason we don't have awesome player numbers right now.
 
I think the real question is, how do  we draw more players to C and S, and how do we get more off peak players.

 

Edit: sorry, no idea how to make images smaller...appears not to be possible?

[TornadoHorse]

I'd like to see new people given a chance if it's only a minor offence. If someone breaks a rule, I've always thought it be better to speak to them about it first if it is something like griefing. If it does come to banning a player, that the banning staff member tells them what they've done wrong. I saw an appeal a few days ago where the player was unbanned straight away, even though they stated that they didn't know what they had done wrong. However, this shouldn't excuse new people from breaking the rules. They should read them and abide by them just like anyone else, but we shouldn't try to drive them away. Any player can be a good player.

[MasterCommaThe]

(i'm not sure if PvE or Creative have jails, though)

I can confirm that C has a jail. I wish the /jail command worked to send them there instead of having to manually teleport people there.

[Diznatch52]

I can confirm that C has a jail. I wish the /jail command worked to send them there instead of having to manually teleport people there.

Can you please the concept and application of a "jail" in the context of minecraft? If there is one on P, I've spent a very long time not knowing about it.

[schererererer]

Can you please the concept and application of a "jail" in the context of minecraft? If there is one on P, I've spent a very long time not knowing about it.

A jail is just a confined space you tp a breaker of rules to get their attention if they arent responding to messages or kicks, usually for minor but persistent infractions. We used to have one on P, with a specific command /jail to prevent teleporting away, but it never saw much use except for the few times our banning system went haywire. Typically now we go warn with a message or mail, kick, ban; though skipping a step often happens if a moderator is being swamped, the offense is not minor, or it's clear there's malicious intent.

[sbrandwoo]

Bans aside, I think P has the right amount of players. Given tick rates and chat noise, I can't imagine having any more would be a good thing at all. And people are still managing to build a lot of awesome stuff.

 

Also to be considered is the amazingly low level of griefing on the server - I'm very happy with how the admins and mods look after the server and wouldn't want to change anything that would comprimise that.

[EeHee2000]

S has fairly low grief, P being pretty secure in protections etc.

However, C is riddled with buildings littered with holes and builds that would be considered grief due to their consuming and obviously intentional space-taking. C has a very low level of players, averaging 1-7 these days. As of the last 5 days or so we've had a steady 5 (approximate) in our online players list, however it can easily go out if control when there's far too many griefers on in an aVo fest, or when there's an extended period of time where 1 or perhaps 2 players can cause a lot of damage unnoticed. I think more regularly active attention should be paid to C, not just awareness. There should be more checks and most of all more mods able to be called at a near instant when they're online in IRC, or perhaps mumble.

TL;DR - No, read it you lazy shit.

PS: One of the main things I'd like to simply state is that we need faster reaction to grief fests, even though they never happen. Consider yourself one of those guys that is always preparing for a zombie apocalypse. :DL