abandoned or half destroyed structures not in use.

Everyone i have an IDEA! Why not make a huge hill over all these structures so technically your not griefing and technically your cleaning up too. I don't know maybe this could resolve some problems?

Thoughts?

What would happen when the owner wants to access said structure again because it ends up to contain a hidden passage way?

I'll be happy to help out with the policy clarification once we get a response from staff - I think a good rule of thumb would be to make it very clear that anything built within the lit up circle around the spawns would be built with the understanding that it is temporary - or maybe if the map could show a new, smaller circle inside that one, with designated "I will build something temporary here, knowing it will be taken down as soon as I leave" status. The hundreds of tiny floating huts around the ocean spawns are just ugly and totally against the 'keep it pristine' rules of frontier building.

Petuniafigtree We do need to keep in mind that even though those huts are ugly not everyone has a talent for building. Many of my frontier builds a complimented regularly by people who say they cant build that good. when I see their builds quite often I think man what an eye sore. But to them it is the best they can do at that time. Being the best they can do dosent go against the 'keep it pristine' rules of frontier building. You also have people with limited time when it comes to playing who do not want to spent their who time playing working on building for months when they may only have a few hours a week to play. now Im not saying everyone who builds one of these falls into these 2 categorys. But it is something we still have to keep in mind

In the mean time I got response from Krysyy. Sorry for delaying my post a bit (she sent her response quite fast) but yesterday evening wasn't the best time for me to post

And I do believe I have good news to share. Our idea isn't shot down up front, so we definitely have plenty of room to try and come up with a decent set of rules together. However... We also got a request: that we start this thing when land protection has been implemented.

I think that's a fair request because staff is already pretty busy with all sorts of things, and it would be bit of a waste if we were to propose our ideas / policy only to find out that land protection is coming which will change a lot.

Now: this doesn't have to stop us from creating our draft. As I hinted at above: I think it will take some time before we'll have a good draft set up, and who knows what will happen in between? Empires 5th birthday coming up within a week, who knows what is going to happen?

(my guess is as good as everyone else, but it wouldn't be the first time that something big happened around EMC's birthday).

Next (but give me time, maybe today, but otherwise tomorrow) I'll post the summing up of everything we had & discussed so far.

But honestly: I think this is positive news and a good basis to start with.

Awesome, thanks Shell!

Ok, sorry for more delays. It's quite hot over here (another heatwave in Holland) and that doesn't really work well for me with regards to writing and forum activities.

The issue at hand: removing / repairing abandoned or destroyed structures in the Frontier.

The main idea: setting up a group of players who go into the frontier to help clean things up, while carefully keeping other players in mind. Repairing / cleaning up, not griefing. We also learned that staff is doing some manual cleaning up every once in a while (as mentioned by Krysyy here).

Some of the things mentioned / suggested so far:

• A derelict policy, where inactive structures get removed / repaired.
• An official Frontier maintenance team.
  • One of the issues: we'd need a set of guidelines.
  • We'll need a wide time frame to determine if something is abandoned or not.
  • We'd need recruiters (get people onboard with this).
  • Suggested: people would focus on the Frontier on their home server because that's most likely most familiar to them.
• Staff is open to the idea, but requests that we present our suggestion after land protection comes out.
  • This is to prevent that we spend time on setting something up, only to discover that we have to start from scratch again because land protection will change a few things.
• Petunia is willing to open up her outpost to "adopt" some SMP5 wild utilities & oversee SMP5.
• Shell (me?) is willing to help out on SMP2 (and maybe in the overall too, let's see where this takes us first).

Anything I missed?
I think we should definitely aim for a maintenance team if possible. Personally I also like the idea of trying to recruit players who'd help on their own server first (because you'd be most likely familiar with that outpost).
So, some open points right now:

• Maintenance team structure.
  • I guess we should try to aim for one per SMP and Utopia (?).
• A policy to work by (so far all we got is a rough timeout time frame (3 months)).
  • Very fair comment from M1ner: don't make it too extensive or severe: we don't want to scare players away.
• Building materials.
  • No promises: Players suggested this before: maybe GRIP can help out here a bit. I'd need to look into this first because obviously griefed players come first. But there are some items which have become a bit excessive where amount goes. So maybe that can be used for repairs.
• Attracting players to join.
• Eventually presenting / discussing the whole thing with staff.

Anything I missed?

Go Shell, great write up as usual Thank you!
When I'm not doing the smp8 public wild utilities (and granted, that isn't terribly often), I'd be happy to help out on smp8. I'm especially familiar with Wild N, Wild S, the nether, and the end on there.
You might have been thinking this bit goes in the policy/procedure write up, but something about tear it down versus repair it. I think that boils down to "can we tell what it was" for repair, or if it's been griefed beyond all recognition.

Good plan! I'll volunteer for the Smp5 cleanup crew.

One suggestion on how it could work:

We put an 'intent to dismantle' or 'intent to repair' sign on any structures that look abandoned. We should include date on them and give the players 1 month (or was this where you had requested 3 months?) to place another sign next to it stating their name, and they are still using it etc. I guess we would also have to say that if the sign we place is simply removed it is probably the work of more griefers. We would note down the coordinates somewhere, maybe as a separate post on this thread, and make a note ourselves of when to follow up with the actual tear-down or rebuilding. We could back up our work (CYA) with screenshots that show the coords with the 'before' and 'after' - just in case.

My alt has a res that I intended to use as a hub for an inter-outpost co-op but it's not being used as that project fell through. I would gladly donate the use of it and issue perms to each team so we can place donated materials there. I built a clubhouse and had intended for each member outpost to build their own office spaces- I've stocked it with some villagers for trading but not much else is going on there. It's on Smp5 at /v Lilyosmunster 2, the glass dome, in case anyone wants to check it out.

The question that is open is if / how that areas can be used except for travel.
Shall people or groups be able to build there?
Shall people / groups eventually be able to claim land there and have it protected?

I believe if you want to worry about eyesores look at the area near the spawn. I rather enjoy wandering out in the wild somewhere and walk up upon someone's build or statue or something. I wonder who made it and how long ago it was. That is part of the allure of this server. You can build something in the wild and other players years from now can wonder upon it. Reses reset if players aren't on, if you reset parts of the wild you take away the history.

Yeah, this is an issue not easily answered right now I think. The main thing is making sure that you're actually repairing / enhancing the area and not merely removing things which you think shouldn't be there. In other words: making sure that you don't let personal bias slip in, what may seem like something stupid to you might actually have more meaning to others.

Maybe we could use this thread to 'report' certain structures for now, so those which some of us think are an eyesore?After that we could try to come up with a plan on how we could work together to fix whatever is broken and actually pick a time/date to work on it.

Food for thought?

I agree with ShelLuser. I was out about 15k, 15k looking around a week or two ago and wondered up on what was a village. Someone had changed it and made it their home but still had the original village feel. It was decorated with flowers and such and was very cool but not hugely elaborate. Whoever made it it must have been a long time ago, there were about 4 or 5 iron golems they made but no villagers left. All probably taken by zombies.

I kept wondering and came upon a series of statue type things made of stone. They were intentionally made and there was a series with each one slightly different than the others. Not huge but very creative. I followed them and tried to find some type of message in them. Imaging they maybe would lead me to a hidden treasure or something if I could just interpret them correctly. I found nothing.

I kept wondering and came upon what appeared to be a house made of cobble and wood. I say appeared to be as it was never completed. But it looked like some ruins or maybe something out of a WWII movie. Part of the wall missing even though the door was still there and a chest with things like some flowers, logs, etc... And even stranger was a horse with gold armor wondering around outside the house.

In all these things I found they were all abandoned as they were close enough to the outpost I belong to that I would have noticed others out there. In each case it fun to wonder upon them and explore them and fantasize who was there. Why didn't that house get completed, what happened to the villagers, and was there a pattern to the statues that lead to a chest buried long ago? The frontier is vast and although a dirt house or dirt tower has no place there I still don't want to wipe away the history that is the frontier.

Any attempt to cultivate the areas in question would surely take this into account and try to preserve any structure that is potentially worth preserving.
Changing the other parts like harvested deserts and hunting grounds full of creeper holes would make that structures more easily accessible and it would also provide space that invites for new structures to be created.

the yellow square around each spawn is the Periodic Reset Area. It used to be reset more often before the waste. It still is reset. I know I mentioned this to you before : - ;

No one has ever accused me of having a great memory Seffy, no worries Thanks!

hey, I have heard talk of the frontier clean up operation but stumbled across this post today. The I dea of putting some signs around the structure/build notifying the creator of intent to change/repair or remove the build is a good Idea. BUT time is the factor.

scenario--
I have a little hobby farm out in SMP1 frontier that takes me an hour of real life time to get there With a modest house and decent sized storage shed. Not far away I am working on -------- with another structure not far from it. Now, I have placed a sign asking if anyone else comes out this far and have a blank sign next to it for a reply and I have my name posted on the wall and a locked chest as well so no mistaking whos place this is.. BUT, I have not been there in a couple months so a sign left in my front yard would not be seen by me. If there were no locked chest and no markings from me, you would not know it was mine. I have been busy in game and in real life that a one hour trip to my country home seems kind of tedious and not relaxing at this point.

But I dont know If my place has damage or not from mobs or griefers at this moment. It could qualify for destruction for all I know. Soooo......

I think I have illustrated the problem that we all know to exist. Right now if you are reading this, your thinking. get to the point already and tell me something I dont know.

My thoughts are,

yes put Multiple signs around the structure. Sometimes you might just run in the back door grab something and leave without seeing the sign on the front door.

Ask staff to put a message in the chat window that repeats to let players know this is comming and ongoing. We get spammed with everything else, this could be important. Just a quick note that lets players know (Wherever they are, town, waste, nether, ect...) in the running chat that "Frontier Beautification Has Begun. Landscape repair and abandoned, unrepairabe, unclaimed builds will be removed." Put what ever time frame you guys and staff are happy with. I dont know but something like that, because there are some people who only play the game and dont use the forum.

Some people might turn off chat so ask staff to send out a mass mail that this is going to start so that they are aware. then tehey cant say they were not notified.

If there is a questionable build because of looks, because it is quaint, or because it just might be someone who has been offline in awhile because of the content of chest or whatever, Take screenshots note coordinates and pass the buck to staff (who will most likely say leave it till last) (last hahahahah like how long till you get to say, well this is the last one. What do you think?) sorry, i digress.

And of course, The wonderful updates from Shel. I wonder if we could get screen shots of the work done. Like this old build?

Anyway, I know people work hard on their builds, I know when I put a block down it should still be there when I come back (I hope). Like me, though, people start things and see something shiny go by...and...what was I... oh right they have trouble completing what they started.

ok, now I have lost track. But after re-reading a bit, I see this is important. You guys rock for taking on this task, I will help donate more materials to GRIP so we can get the Job don.

EDIT-- Oh right, my ideas were to give the players heads up so thry had time to let you know their ownership of a build.

I have a goldfish memory also.

Creeper damage and minor scraps of buildings left scattered around can be just cleaned as found. Recognizable builds require more consideration. A scrap of a small building left standing for months I would have no problem removing. The owner would appear to have no interest in it. (Or sometimes I fix it up myself and stock it with a bit of food.)

Well, I don't think you can get rid of them without private messaging a staff member. Getting rid of them without permission can result in a permeant ban.