Pffff... I'm afraid my autistic self can't put my feels into words. I'll leave it at this: I still love you all.
Listen, I will keep saying this. Unless staff are posting an official thread, it does not matter how their grammar is in game! Nobody cares if anyone does or does not strive for the utmost perfection in grammar in game. Unless someone sounds like "wher iz teh wildarnes outpoost?", there is no problem! Staff should not be held to crazy high standard on the slightest of things. The human brain does not function well when typing as if you were having a conversation. It knows you have to reply fast, and types as if you were talking to them in person. That is why people care less about chat in game.
I feel that the decline of our community is not caused by moderation, grammar, or some of the other things listed above. Way back when EMC was under control of JustinGuy and ICC, the staff were constantly trolling people and joking around. I feel that made us more of a family, not the politically correct community we are today. Maybe it's just me, but people seem afraid to say it like it is. Everyone is metaphorically tiptoeing around thinking "we mustn't offend anyone." It's not lack of activity, staff, or whatever else, I feel it is the community as a whole. Nobody is...at fault... I feel we have lost the family aspect. I still love EMC, we have just changed.
That was the whole point of my thread "AGA- The Opposition", I proved in that thread that people DO NOT want others to speak their mind about something. Just goes to prove that everyone in the community has become up-tight and robotic.
The biggest reason I think the community has depreciated over time is that the general player age is becoming lower and lower. This is due to minecraft becoming more available to younger audiences in a vast variety of different ways. For example, the fact that a great portion of families own some sort of computer in the 'first world' means that children can easily and quickly download and login to EMC. The lower the average age, the less mature the community is in general, and so there is less sense of actually BEING a community. Younger players also have (on average) less respect for other players, as they simply do not think that way when playing video games. I certainly did not interact with internet communities such as this until I was at least 11/12. At that point I was capable of understanding what the internet actually is and what it consists of, unlike my younger counterpart. (I am speaking out of experience & general assumptions and I know other people are different) Aside from this, I have to agree with previous posters that the staff have changed since I first joined. I've seen people push the limits so many times, and would have been a ban in the past - and still should be. NOT A 5 MINUTE BAN. A 5 minute ban is LITERALLY NOTHING. An intentional troller/griefer can wait that long and not be bothered. If someone was truly sorry for their actions, they can certainly wait for a longer ban to expire or even appeal on the forums. As a Veteran player, I have definitely noticed a considerable change in the empire in just the past few months. No more comments will be said from me as there will be people offended If I continue, and that is something I simply do not want to get into. I have tried to be as polite as I possibly can whilst typing this, and just reading through it and the thread in general makes me quite sad.
I think one of the main things that keeps being brought up in these sort of threads (I fully expect gawadrolt to respond ) is the formal relationship between staff and community members. I realize staff has a job and I realize they aren't going to respond to everyone 100% of the time. It personally doesn't bother me so much as I guess I'm used to it, but you don't really see casual conversations between some of the staff members and community members. It seems as if a lot of them are there strictly to enforce the rules (I know that's their job). I think maybe a lot of people just want to not feel like staff is put on a pedastal and to be able to be more open/friendly with them in general. I would like to say though that uber_corq is, in my opinion, a prime example of how to be a mod (I don't mean this offensive in the least to any other mods as I don't have a ton of experience with them). He is incredibly friendly with all community members and enjoys hanging out rather than always being only the rule enforcer. I would absolutely love to see more staff like this.
The Staff are encouraged to have fun with the community UNLESS staff action is required. If you think there are any staff that are too strict/stoic when it's not needed, please let me know so I can play yoyo with their player and possibly lock them in a flaming sponge ball. =P
I'll try this when I get home, but we went over this back when I was TRYING to keep watch over rule-breakers for one specific bullying case and it wasn't possible at that time. We'll see if anything has changed.
I think you're confusing Mumble with Ventrillo. That is not possible in Mumble. I stand corrected. o.o When did that become a thing? I'm 99% sure noone on EMC mumble has that though.
I agree with your last point. The community always looks for giveaways. There's so many players I have never seen on the forums that will only participate in giveaways. They don't even read the OP sometimes. Even I don't participate in every single giveaway. For your second point, I think the staff choose good mods. Sometimes, you haven't seen them on the forums at all, but they are probably active in-game. Thanks for sharing your ideas, they will make EMC a better place. -Ender
I haven't been on long enough to fully understand some of you, but I will say that I agree with your point about mutes. The people who are being trolls will just get right back up and keep trolling until they are banned. (I have experience with being muted for spamming in my earlier days, however I am not a troll and so I felt sorry) However, I will say that most of the Staff are doing their best to help people. The majority of the Staff that I have met/encountered are very chill and don't like to punish people. They are friendly and happy to help people. Every now and then I think that a punishment may need to be a little more harsh, but for the most part, they are appropriate. (I know I'm not a veteran or anyone who is very significant to EMC, but I just wanted to share my opinion.)
I want to share an opinion. On SMP8 the only new moderator I've really noticed is Seffychan and she was well known, pretty much online 24/7, before she was made moderator. So not sure where that comment came from. Also the community today feels like a much better community than on the first day I joined. There was a lot more bullying back then. Today people are much more accepting of new players.
A troll, who is saying extremely offensive comments, does not deserve to be simply muted. A troll needs to be taken care of and put out of other people's lives. Trolls are going to keep fighting to make people miserable. Yes there will probably be some complaining, but if it's that annoying, that's what /ignore is for. The troll is going to keep feeding on other people's anger until they are taken out of the game. There is no place in EMC for trolls, so why not just ban them and keep them out of everyone's lives? If the troll truly feels sorry, he/she will go back and try to get appealed and then everyone can go back to their normal everyday lives.
First of all, let's address that feeling of decline in community togetherness. I think that, as others have said before me on this thread, a major part of the problem is the lack of community projects, whether those projects are outposts or Town buildings. Up to recent months, there were outposts all over the place, and the community was closer because of it; people worked together to create these fantastic cities thousands of blocks outside of Town, fighting off monsters and gaining resources from scratch. And the Town projects, of course, cannot be discounted. Allow me to cite an example of the way a single project can impact the community. Many of you veterans will remember what was known as the SMP4 Project. Led by Moderator R0bbieJo, the plan was for the project to be a monstrous city of about 24 residences (I may be wrong on the exact number) enclosed by huge, quartz walls. Keep in mind that back when this project began, quartz had just came out and was a very expensive, difficult to acquire material. And yet, player after player volunteered to go on quartz-mining expeditions to help the project, and player after player consistently filled the project's donation center with quartz, nether brick, blaze rods, armor, and several other needed materials. The whole community was in on it. Eventually, to the great disappointment of many, the project dwindled to a stop before it could truly be born, mainly as a result of R0bbieJo (as well as Tinkerbell28 and ob1bob69, R0bbie's second-in-commands) leaving the server. However, if you go on SMP4 today, the beginnings of the walls still stand, the roots of a once-mighty vision that one person had and that the ENTIRE SERVER supported. That project made us more of a family than anything else, I think, and I'd love to see and participate in other large-scale community outposts or projects. They bring us together more than anything else. While I'm here, I might as well address the grammar issue. For those who complain about staff, team, and forum members using poor grammar and/or punctuation, trust me, sometimes it drives me absolutely crazy. But, no matter how irritable something as small as the lack of a comma might be, I always manage to remember that the lack of a comma is exactly that: small. I do not criticize or correct the grammar of others on EMC for the simple reason that it doesn't actually do any good for the server. The majority of the people being corrected will likely just resent being publicly called out, the little comments on incorrect grammar fill otherwise well-written threads with unnecessary spam, and it generally just makes us all a little more bitter. The grammar is not an issue, but constantly fretting about it is. *snicker* Careful what you wish for, Tech... *Pulls on a trollface mask* I really must ask Caden about this. At this point, I must feel like a brother to him, with all the times I've trolled him. But in all seriousness, I suppose I understand where you're coming from. When somebody laughs, it is the ultimate expression of happiness. You don't control it, you don't ask for it, you just laugh, whether in joy or hilarity. I do think joking within a community is beneficial for said community.
