Have an issue? Let's Talk :)

I would never apply to moderate these servers. I'm already an active mod running spam control on the Faster Than Light boards, and know full well the kind of patience it takes to deal with even a small community. One the size of EMC would drive me bat-guano crazy.

Clearly you have your own opinions, and nothing said in this thread is going to change them. However, when you resort to personal attacks you devalue the point you were trying to make initially, and people stop taking you as seriously. This is a basic point of psychology - if you want to make your point, make it clearly and impersonally and don't let your personal passions inflame the argument.

Jeremy, I just thought of something that is actually rather old that I had all but forgotten about, it did kinda upset me a little, but I never said anything about it.. Do you remember a few years ago that I tried making dereliction reports based off of the addresses on the servers and how long the residences stood derelict, without prejudice (Meaning I did the report from a neutral site and typed up every the residence information of every potential derelict residence without physically going to the residences themselves and forgetting to list aesthetically pleasing residences).. I only ever really ended up making 2 of them because they took hours to do and even longer to format everything into Excel. However, I quit doing them because I felt as though they were worthless and were pretty much ignored because of the fact that all of the information that I spent hours collecting could likely be obtained in Square in like 20 seconds. ..and although I was thanked for taking the time to do them, I felt as though I had wasted my own time doing something like that unwarranted, and then felt as though they kinda just got tossed in the recycle bin without a second thought..

Actually, we did use those each time they came in. Went through the list both times with Sr. Staff. I totally remember that. While we have it on super auto mode now, having those lists definitely did speed up time back then.

Yep... that sums up about everything I might have said, Kephras... I remember a similar case of the kicked-without-context case which I wish I had a screenshot of. I forget my exact choice of words and I don't know who it was who kicked me but same situations. Anyway, it was something along the lines of when I found out that a certain dark room grinder the nether portal in my wilderness outpost fed into was a member of the town who was really bossy and tried to commander it and I said that I was surprised because they seemed like a terrible person. To this day I don't understand it completely as to why I was kicked or maybe it was a 10 minute ban, I honestly forget. All I can remember is no warning and regardless if it was seen as a slip up of something I shouldn't have or intentful, I should have been warned some way instead of instantly doing so. I am not disrespecting any staff however, and can't point fingers anyway. Whelp, enough of a rant from me. For now...

DO YOU SEE THIS PAY, ATTENTION TO ME.

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Seriously thought we were gonna be able to voice our issues and get clear answers but instead it turned into a bad episode of Jerry Springer and Oprah......

Now that I have your attention, PandaEatsRamen brought forth an issue of the EMC game event things. I dont remember what all it said and i'm to lazy to look through all this chaos above this post to find it mmmkaaay...

NOW ---- THE ISSUE AT HAND THAT I WANTED TO DISCUSS

A lot of people have been missing the events going on, REASONS because the mod in charge of the events don't post in the forums when it is starting at the moment.

I know there are server wide announcements but im not in the game 24/7 but im always on forums. Maybe if we could get a FORUM POST UP ON DAT FRONT PAGE 30 MINS BEFORE IT STARTS so that forum people can see it and be like I GOTTA GO. So they can get to the games on time since they are suppose to forum post anyways >.> (panda told me they were suppose to so if im wrong its her fault).

Not trying to be like U MODS DONT POST EVENTS U ARE BAD, cuz i know how busy you guys are and that taking time to go to the forums and post will just add on more stuff you have to do. But can we all get a forum announcement BEFORE LIKE RIGHT BEFORE the event starts.
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ANSWER THIS ISSUE PLEASE

Srsly, how are we even related? Lol. I never said they HAD to post on the forums, it would be nice for an announcement and a post. I also didn't come across as "READ THIS HELLO!" xD

They usually post it in game 2 hours in advance, if you do not see it then you should pay attention to the game every once in a while.

And they sometimes use threads much like that Mob Arena D&D got going on.

I would rather have important stuff on the front page, perhaps a small box on the side for events?

when you talk to me i only listen to like half of it

You kinda read my mind a little bit. I have some plans for events and all the staffs and organization of events and more scheduled daily/weekly events. We wanna get the new mods all trained up first, but this is coming.

I still reserve the right to hold my "omg there's a random icc event happening sometime soon but we dont know when omg" events though.

On the bright side, at least you spammed 3 times the normal amount of announcements!

Sorry I am not looking at forum crap every 20 mins, I am doing school work and taking care of my baby (you can see him as my picture right there and my Sig, hes so cute) 2 hours really that doesnt give me time to see it They post and then AUCTION threads and stuff cover it up and I cant see it when i update the page.

Thank you : ) < dis my sarcastic face

Thanks cow jack and everyone else i didnt read your guys post yet but i saw them, for answering my post

All chat can be and some is monitored by staff, never assume or believe your chat is private. Nothing has ever been more damaging to EMC then this, to find out that your private conversations are being read by others at any time. me

Its the peeping tom syndrome of chat.

As a long time supporter for (counting today) 2years and 9 days today i feel that it is more a personal responsibility on my part to voice my concerns for things that might make my own game play style jeopardized as well as give my compliments to things added that make my gaming here at EMC more entertaining for me.

With that said, i too have many concerns that have altered the way i play here at EMC. But i also have many compliments to most of the EMC staff too.

My main concern i have that really made me have to change the way i play are as follows:
1. Massively over-powered Mobs
This is truely the whole reason i have stopped mining far out away from any spawn area, which for me was my whole EMC livelihood as I choose to be a Mega Mall owner and did not use suppliers to restock my store. I am so worried about going out to my wild town for fear of it being the spawn for a boss mob or even worse an enraged creeper that will in turn massively destroy my creations that i hardly ever live out in the wild anymore. i loved living in the wild full time up until that update. I even started living out there when ISMOOCH ran his wild town now known as pazzo. It's bad enough that players feared thieves and greifers but to be told (back when the update came out)that sorry we're gonna add mobs that can do massive damage to your wild community(basically the same as any greifer could) and you can either deal with it or leave. i saw this reply stated by many players not just a few staff. Personally i did what from what i can see now only about 30%(estimated) of the players i played with a year ago did and adapted. Finding new ways to supply my store with the compromise of not living in the wild again until that long awaited update of wild protected areas. Which i'm can honestly say am still excited to see in the hopefully near future. Don't misunderstand me, i do understand where EMC is headed and aikar's reasoning as to why it's going in this direction. I also truly appreciate the mass amount of hard (and i'm sure tiring) work he has done to try and make this the best possible server for all of us as a community. For that i tried not to be one of those that asked to completely remove this update, in my opinion that would not be right to aikar who worked so hard on this update to help EMC grow and change and not feel so stagnate. For this I commend him. I would however like to agree to a suggestion i saw earlier in the thread here that once wild protection areas are implemented that for those of us that like living in the wild but more for building unlimited sized creations rather then mob hunting be allowed the option of having these areas hostile mob free. that about covers it on this one. sorry for the long rant. just couldn't short story it and still make my point.

I will end this post with a well deserved Thank you Aikar. Yes i too saw back before Aikar became owner of EMC a personality (as much as i could not knowing him in real life but via trying to understand his point of view through words on a screen) much like my husband, a man set in his ways, a little stubborn but also fairly open to the ideals and opinions of our( i say "our" for i feel just as much a part of it here as many others do like a family) community. I a few times had the opportunity to "hang out" for a short time with aikar in-game. I was intrigued when i learned he was our new "leader" for although i do not know him well he represented himself as a person who would do great things for EMC. As i've said before in another post, you can't have the good without the bad for then there would be no balance. As someone said earlier in a post(can't remember who atm sorry), no one no matter what they do will ever be able to please 100% of the people, but i personally can see that at least aikar is making a true effort to make EMC the best he can possibly make it.

Ok i'm done lol. believe it or not i hate typing.

Thank you everyone for replying. I needed some time to think, because I felt like you misunderstood me a bit. It also gave the thread some time to quiet down haha. Also, thank you Jack for posting the Square 'disclosure' thread, I felt it may have been partly inspired by my post.
While you say chat logs are only meant to be watched when someone was reported, you are right in theory, but I haven't felt like that while in game. I have proof for specific cases, but I'm not out here trying to get people demoted or anything. That's the last thing I'd want, I love all staff. I think the problem lies with the system, not with specific staff members and I'm afraid that if I give that proof in a pm to ICC, this issue will be quietly dealt with by demoting some staff without addressing the underlying problem.
I'm trying to do the right thing too here.

After having read my posts, Kephras tried contacting me and I've tried to explain to him how I felt. I believe he's going to post something after this that will say what I've tried to say, but more eloquently.
I really appreciate you all taking the time to read and reply to this thread. Thank you so much.

I was only stating from my point of view, because I did them not knowing if they would even get seen, much like I tweeted Aikar's blog to Notch and Jeb.. And I didn't know if I was wasting my time back then or not, but to me it did, at least back then..

Let's all have a quick rest. I have an idea!

Much better? humm?

ICC, I've spoken some with Palm regarding the whole privacy issue, and it seems you've kind of missed the point with your request for logs and suggestion of taking action among the staff. The real problem isn't that moderators may or may not have acted improperly, it's Square, and the monitoring process in general that's at fault here.

Now Palm pointed me to a post that illustrates part of the problem fairly well:

Spoiler'ed for brevity, but the pertinent section is highlighted orange. Square allows the viewing of chat channels, including Group, which for all intents and purposes we believe ought to be treated as private chat (like /tell). Palm made some points already with how Group is used by players, and it can be a very jarring experience to have moderators respond to conversation that is perceived as "private."

The solution is twofold:

• Make it clear (as internal policy) to all mods & staff, that Group should be treated as /tell and considered private conversation except in very specific circumstances (discussion of proposed griefing, admission of illegal mods, and so forth). At no time should a moderator or staff feel compelled to "interject" in a group discussion if they are not invited.
• Fix Square. Group chat should be restricted to logging only, not realtime, and viewable only by Sr. Staff. Treat it the same way as other private conversation, and respond only when it is /reported and necessary.

Again, I just want to clear the air and reiterate that this isn't about taking action for specific instances, it's about ensuring that internally, EMC treats Group as a private discussion, with all the proper protocols for such in place.