Could EMC’s policy against griefing be more efficient?

Hello, all you grief-stricken players,

Nearly a year ago, I happened on Nzscruffy’s big iron farm near spawn at frontier on SMP5. It was so raided by griefers that no iron came out anymore, and I started to fix it, together with my pals of Group72. When it was working, sort of, Nzscruffy, reborn as Mystickrafter and later as himself again, came in and showed us how to optimize it, put in a 4th underground level and created the central collection point.

During all that work, we had to battle griefers. This took so much of my play time, that I decided to leave the maintenance of the farm to others, especially during my long absence times in Africa. Luckily, people like Dektirok, Marshmallow369, f_Builder_s and many others took over and kept the farm alive. Lately, Marvin_72 spent most of his play time fixing what the griefers destroyed the day before, and he is close to giving up, too, because he’d like much more to do community work in Jackpot Canyon.

Bigdavie did most of the banning of the griefers (real fast, too!), and he told us it’s mostly newcomers. He also told me that staff cannot divulge the names of the avatars involved due to possible legal implications.

Now, I think we have 2 groups of griefers:
Group A. The curious ones, mostly newbees, trying to find out how things work and too dumb (or indifferent) to fix what they broke. This group could be kept smaller by a more to-the-point tutorial, proving to them that griefers can be caught. Most of them just need a tutor for a few days to make them understand what they did not in the tutorial. Mostly, no ban needed there (any suggestions how we could set up a tutelage?).
Group B. The bad ones, breaking things for the sake of breaking. Most of them don’t care to be caught, because after a ban they go to another server and keep griefing.

In group B we have the “professional” griefers, and there is no hiding against them. I made an experiment last week to prove this and looked for an interesting structure on the dynmap far out; found 2 nice looking iron farms in the [REMOVED BY STAFF] and went there by boat and foot. I did NOT hide on the map. Went inside one of the aesthetically most pleasing iron farms I ever saw, a griefer’s heaven! Of course, I did not change or break any of their blocks. There were no locked doors. Had I not revealed myself to BAMMindustries, whom I found in his office, nobody would have learned that they had a visitor (I apologize for entering uninvited). They thought to be safe against griefers, being so far away. Well, they are not. My first base was farther away from spawn than theirs and still got destroyed completely, down to level 20, including a nearbay village. The professional griefers cannot be avoided by distance.

So, what to do?

I suggest to put the names of griefing and banned avatars into a public database, for other servers to help decide whom they let in and other players to learn whom they play with. According to my friend, a lawyer, an avatar is NOT a legal (juristic) person, hence making its behaviour public is not against any law. However, since a Minecarft construct is the intellectual or literary property of the human player who had it built (no matter how insubstantial it is), destroying it is a criminal act of the human player behind the griefing avatar. Should she/he reveal herself/himself, legal action could be taken against her/him.

Of course I am not aware of all the aspects of server administration, so I started this thread (with a probably too long post) and hope to get useful insights.

I seem to recall that something like this already exists, just not sure if EMC uses it or not. What would happen is when you ban a player you had the option of sending info to a centralized database that existed outside of any one given server. I don't think that any servers auto-banned anyone in that database but it could be used as a reference.

wkramer already said it: there are websites out there which already utilize this, one of the better known sites is MCBans. It basically utilizes a server plugin which also shares disciplinary actions (tempban / permban) with the website and checks the record for new visitors using that website for bans which have already been set in place on other servers. One could set it so that if a player has already been banned on 2 other servers he could not set foot on yours. This tool is heavily used by smaller servers which want to try and keep their userbase safe.

Here you can see my reputation, only issued bans and never got 'm. This is yours Grauhaar (you can use mcbans.com/player/<name> to check for someone).

Although the approach works, somehow, it also brings a lot of issues with it. I've lived situations where we (on other place) got pestered by some trolls / griefers and where the staff could use nothing but /kick because the MCBans website was down. Which really doesn't help at all. You're more or less making yourself dependant on another website because that's how the system works: either you fully use it or you don't. There is no in between way, otherwise the system would be flawed from the get-go.

Another problem with this, in my opinion, is that you'd rely on other people's judgement. This is a point for discussion but even so: how fair is it if you'd deny someone access because they (allegedly!) violated the rules of another server even if those rules don't have to match with yours?

In other words: Some servers have a much lower tolerance level than others. If a player happens to have the misfortune of visiting those only to get booted for... lets say a little immature behaviour (because our example case is actually 11 years old) but not in a negative way. Our example was super excited that they finally found a "cool server!!(lots of !'s)". So how fair would it be if they got denied access to servers which can cope with this, like EMC?

Another thing: as cool as the idea sounds let me burst one bubble for you: this would hardly change anything.

Professional griefers, as you call them, sometimes have dozens of different accounts. I've also lived through this once, where the same player kept coming back during one evening, hellbent on causing trouble. Fortunately for us his choice of words and overall way of expressing himself gave him away every time. But even so... And this happened on a server which utilized this MCBans system.

The idea is a good one, but it would also bring a lot of problems and issues with it.

That idea would be so so unfair 1- that means no one can start fresh and it wouldn't be nice cause they paid 30 Bucks to play and it would be so unfair. But the groups are very procise and good.

Just because you see something on the map does not give you the right to wander in and look around. You were asked nicely to please leave. You wouldn't. You were asked to leave MANY more times and did not. Instead asking question after question. And when asked AGAIN not to go in certain areas.. guess what you did? Went there anyways like you owned the place. You were trespassing and tried to justify it. And we never thought to be safe from griefers, so you are getting your facts mixed up. We have to right to ask people to leave. In this case we wanted that. In the future it might be better to find out who's it is before just walking in. And thanks for spitting out the cords to our work. Greatly appreciated.

It's unfair for them to tear apart work other people have worked hard on. In the past month we've had around 20 grief incidents just on smp8 alone. I realize it's summer, so you're going to have tons of young new players looking to cure their summer boredom. However, it's incredibly annoying and in my opinion I don't like the idea of second chances for the most part and I definitely don't like that the "second chance" book is glorified.

That's so true i worked a lot on my farms on smp8 and they are being griefed a lot

My interest isn't in clarifying clear cut cases of griefing but the vagueries. I come across a few planks of wood just floating in the air. If I take it, am I griefing? I find some items in a villager chest. The village isn't claimed, there are no signs. Is it stealing?

The floating planks could be a structure that was griefed but by this point it's just clean up. Someone could have put items in a villager chest but it's an open world generated structure. It would be silly to expect people not to loot villager chests.

So what would be the ruling on this or similar scenarios. I haven't had a lot of experience on emc so just wondering.

It doesn't really need to be clarified as it's common sense. If you see a piece of wood not attached to a tree, then don't touch it because you didn't chop it down from the tree and it didn't walk itself over and place itself in the air. Villager chests are naturally generated, so they would be included in things you can touch.

Naturally generated = yes
Not naturally generated = no

My nether rail gets griefed whenever im away for a while.

I get that but I'm talking about a few planks floating in the air. If someone griefed a structure and left a few floating planks then a week later someone comes along and harvests those planks, it would be silly to ban the guy that took the last 3 remaining planks versus whoever griefed the actual structure, if that is what happened, e.g. creeper damage or self-deconstructed. I ask because I often see one or two random floating blocks throughout the wastes/frontier and I don't know about everyone else but it annoys me.

Same. Usually weekly. You get to a point were you just stop caring.

Yeah, but you shouldn't touch it either way. You didn't place it, so it's not yours to touch.

It sucks, but if you need advice I could give you some. We've (knock on wood) never had a single griefing incident as far as our wild base goes or the access to it.

Mine is hidden. You wont find it unless you look hard.
Most of the time its someone falling in while mining, and they only take the slabs.

I should clarify. The rail I'm talking about is more of a pubic one. I use it to get to my rail, which has never been griefed.

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