Angry old white guy

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by Masterkism, Jun 8, 2015.

  1. I know a 5 years old who the kindergarten teachers call "the heart of our kindergarten."
    On several occasions, when another kid destroyed what he was building, he said "oh, you want us to build this some other way?" or "oh, you want us to put blocks away?"
    I think that's quite astonishing for 5 years old.

    Does this kid never steal nor grief?
    Is this a born saint?
    Well, no.
    I have seen him try both stealing and griefing.
    That's stuff everyone has to try and learn why it's not good.
    Some manage to learn this very young, some learn it later.
    And, well, some never - but that's not a reason to be overly pessimistic.
  2. Keeping your work safe isn't pessimism, it's called ownership.
  3. Ok, would you like to help me finish 12220? :)
  4. This makes it sound like "if she griefs then it is my fault because my evaluation was wrong", so "I did something wrong, I did something unreasonable".

    But I don't think this would be true.
    What you did was reasonable - even with the small possibility that your evaluation is wrong.

    Taking some reasonable risk is, obviously, not unreasonable, it is not wrong.
  5. Absolutely. No one adds people because they think they'll take your stuff.
  6. Actually, I think the whole residence griefing is a little more nuanced than you guys make of it. At least on the wiki. No, it's not the residence owners fault if they got griefed, that "honor" is still reserved for the player(s) who did the griefing. In that respect I fully agree with Penguin up there.

    However, it is the owners responsibility if they got griefed in town. Too many players dumb that down to "their responsibility, so also their fault" but I also think that's a little bit too harsh. It's the griefers fault to simply abuse the trust another player has placed in them. To my knowledge this is also how it's worded in the wiki. I know about one part because I rephrased that section myself (put more emphasis on it and worded it slightly different) but also tried my best to walk the middle ground: "If residence admins decide to steal your items then the staff cannot help you because you basically gave these players permission to do so!". This actually took me hours to cook up.

    Here's the thing you should be thinking about when reading the sentence up there: What kind of permission am I talking about? Considering the wiki page it should be obvious: residence permissions aka flags. You gave them permission (the flag) to do so.

    No offense intended but... If sections like the one above upset some players to such extends that they can more or less repeat their meaning then I'd say: mission accomplished. Because the whole idea behind all this is to try and make people realize and remember that they are taking risks the very moment they're handing out permission flags. To a very small degree I'd say the end does justify the means a little bit here.

    Even so, it's not the residence owners fault for getting griefed in town, but it is still their responsibility.
  7. I think you've missed the point, then forgot which point you were aiming for.
    To clarify: the overwhelming majority of players are just fine - trustworthy, helpful, friendly, and perfectly reasonable to deal with. A much smaller percentage might fall into the "growing pains" category that you're so eager to extend an olive branch for - and that's fine. I remind you, this is why there's an appeals process for bans. Some people do learn and grow from their mistakes. How charitable you're feeling towards them after being on the receiving end of those "pains" depends mostly on you.

    And then there are those select few who just get a kick out of causing problems, do not care one bit for your idea of community involvement, and are wholly unrepentant about their actions. They might be rare, but to deny they exist at all is naiveté at its finest.

    Now if you're the type who refuses to let a few bad apples spoil your bunch, more power to you. But don't look down on the folks who prefer to play it safe, either. Just because most players won't grief or steal from you, that's no reason not to safeguard yourself against the few who will.
  8. I can get you a DC of enderpearls easily lol
  9. There are few point here, yes, I see them quite connected.

    The main point is "how to reduce griefing and stealing", especially in the Frontier.

    The connection -
    - If you build a public farm near an outpost it's comparable to giving build and other permissions to everyone on a res in the town.
    - To think about what actually happens around stealing or griefing could most probably help reduce that both in and outside of the town.
    - The common background question is how you see the people / the community and how and treat them - the culture of the community.

    That's also my premise. Along with the insight that no one is perfect.

    The interesting question is what part of stealing and griefing falls into this category. The reason why I'm extending the olive branch in that situations is because I've never seen a kid who did not try stealing and griefing. And I think that it is normal for kids to try that again in a "virtual" world although they already did try it and did learn somthing IRL.

    I just think this is a process everyone goes through. So the vast majority is capable to learn from such mistakes.

    Oh, yes.
    You just need to look at the catalog of personality disorders and their epidemiology.
    And virtual worlds and online communities probably are especially attractive to types that have hard time socializing IRL (where again, only small part are thieves and notorious trolls).

    The interesting questions again are
    - How many on EMC, what percentage of new players who join?
    - Is there anything we can do to remedy that,
    A) that is not too hard to do, does not require excessive time and energy
    and
    B) that improves EMC overall and in the long run / does not have detrimental effect overall.

    For example, we could probably technically prevent any stealing or griefing by removing most permissions, but it would make EMC ridiculous and it would destroy the community.

    This does not sound right to me.
    The responsibility is to be cautious, to be careful around permissions.
    But not to take responsibility for others' actions.

    So if a griefing or stealing occurs, the question is "were you reasonably careful with permissions"?
    And if the answer is yes, than I think you can not say that the res owner did anything wrong.

    Exactly. It is also oversimplifying that distorts the reality.

    Doesn't sound right to me. No one would give permissions to steal?

    Perhaps "If you give admin permission, it means "what is mine is also yours." "
    But I think even that goes too far.

    I'd like "If you give admin permision, it means you trust the player to administer / manage / govern your res and your belongings on that res. So you need to very carefully chose whom you might want to do that."

    The original motive here, as I see it, is to make it easy for the EMC staff.
    But the life is not easy and oversimplifications don't work, especially not in the long run.
    There is no shortcut to quality.
    PenguinDJ likes this.
  10. Your guess is as good as mine but I still doubt this...

    I think its simply almost impossible to prove in town. Say I give you admin permissions and tell you that you're free to take my ESCD. You do so, and then I run to the staff while complaining: "M1ner took my ESCD!".

    So how is staff going to determine who is at fault here?

    You can say that I allowed you to take it, then I can say that I only intended for you to clear my residence. In the end we could end up in an endless discussion here. So I'm not too sure if this is used to make it easier on staff, I think it could just as well be to avoid endless discussions about issues of guilt.
  11. Of course.
    People, and especially kids can and do come with all possible and impossible, rational and irrational accusations.
    And yes, it is impossible to prove and solve that.

    So, what can one reasonably do?

    Good example.
    So what would be a reasonable staff action here?

    (Hint: probably not to pretend that they can solve a problem that is not solvable.)
  12. Answer to example provided:
    Search in logs to determine if it was willingly given or stolen. Chat logs, etc all attest to this.

    -If stolen and admitted, then speak with the griefer or ban them, depending on attitude. Obviously lying = harsher punishment.
    -If given willingly, speak to reporter about lying and trying to get someone banned and possibly ban for false report, depending on attitude.
    -If logs are fishy as to who did what, then we wouldn't be able to do anything. We'd tell them to work it out amongst themselves with us as mediators in a conversation in case things go bad.

    Remember, if it's in town, we do not necessarily say 'It's your fault, we can't help you' immediately.
    We do our best to search with the logs that we do have for undeniable evidence. If, and only if, that evidence cannot be found, then we remind the players that they control their own flags for a reason and not to give them out so easily.
  13. To the OP:

    From another old white guy in the same age category... we have to recognize we're playing with a mixed community. Most of those who play are much younger. Many grew up in an internet community where griefing, trolling, and being a complete jerk is a past time and a sport. There are entire websites dedicated to posting the results of these griefing/trolling sessions. *every* multiplayer game on the internet is subject to the actions of these tards.

    EMC appears to give us pretty good tools to use against them. The RES system is fantastic. However, like me you appear to like to build in the wilderness. Just accept that there are *always* going to be tards logging in to do nothing more than to find someone to jerk around. By placing a communal garden near a portal you became target #1. You invested alot of time and energy into something that is so easy to mess with. I applaud your sense of community and collaboration. In our time this type of behavior would spark many good things (friendships, reciprocation, friendliness, etc), but those days are long past.

    In short... you aren't at fault - they are. But we have to recognize that they aren't going away. They are legion. The mods cant ban them all. No sense in hampering the community/server managers with cleaning up after the inevitable. I would encourage you to do what we're doing... build far away from the portal. Hide your passage to your base. We're even considering hiding ourselves on the dynmap. It takes us 10 real life minutes to run to our base using an underground tunnel deep underground with a hidden entrance. Even if they make it to the base we have stockpiled important goods in locked chests and have enough resources to rebuild even if they lava the whole thing down. I would be enraged to find our little slice of heaven burned down, and would probably reach out to admins for help... but only after I had done everything conceivable in my power to avoid the senseless idiots.

    I've personally resigned myself to the fact that there is no other way for me to play multiplayer minecraft and enjoy it.

    You are welcome to come join our area if you like. Hit me up in PM if you are interested.

    - The Fuzz
  14. This is good.
    ... To really try to help the people work it out and find a fair solution.

    I know some moderators who really try their best to help and to find a good solution and are not just eager to find who to ban. This is worth a lot.

    My experience is that it is best to first just listen to both sides and ask both what kind of solution would be best - make them think about it themselves, try to make them think a bit outside of their own viewpoint.

    If a moderator can not see (perhaps because of lack of evidence) what is really going on, I think it is best to say "I've helped you as far as I could" - and not to say "it is your fault because you've trusted / gave permissions".

    The idea that staff is responsible for what happens between people on EMC is flawed, and I guess staff themselves are for greater part responsible for creating such expectations. It is big thing that there are many moderators who will try to help people, but it can only be "try to" and not "be liable to provide".

    This sounds like there are many of such people attacking EMC.
    How many really?

    Does anyone know concrete examples of such attacks?
    Any proof that griefings were planned?
    What percentage of griefing on EMC would fall into this category?

    I think it is very dangerous to start to blame griefings on this kind of terror without solid proof.
    Most probably the community would suffer much more in the long run from that, than from the attacks itself. [Edited to avoid unwanted comparisons to RL.]

    Almost all griefings on EMC that I've experienced and that I know of were in categories "envy kids", "clueless kids", "spoiled kids", "raging kids", "aggressive bullies" and "kids with personality disorders".

    I know that there were few planned scams in the past that originated from known members, but those were not typical griefings.

    I think if we invest some time to analyse that a bit more, that we could come up with ideas for better prevention and better reactions that respect the causes of the problems.
  15. What? Just... what in the actual fluff? We're going from online griefing to ISIS comparisons now?

    [Image removed - please keep it polite and on topic]

    End thread, full stop, game over. Also, NO.

    This is exactly what I was saying in my earlier post, you appear to have completely lost all perspective. I get that you're trying to make a point, to be understanding of griefers and take situations on their own merit, but I cannot take you seriously when you start drawing parallels with full-blown terrorism. You're being ridiculous now.
  16. That's what you're saying, not me.

    [EDIT: Edited that quoted sentence to avoid further comparisons to RL.]

    Did I write that?

    Was I suggesting planned and possibly organized group attacks?

    No. Quite contrary to that, my point is that probably 99% of grifings on EMC fall into the categories I've described above, and that it is NOT "good people" vs. "evil people".

    Yeah.
    GoodnightSmith likes this.
  17. Comparing griefers to terrorists (nice edit, btw) is basically invoking the updated version of Godwin's Law.
    You've stated your actual point several times already, a premise I tend to agree with for the most part. However, I take strong objection with how you seem to look down on the rest of us who realize that 1% (in your estimation) still exist. But regardless of whether the situation is black & white or nuanced gray, the fact of the matter is griefing happens - and staff deals with it. If you want to plead temperance and moderation for the offenders, the thread you want is over here.

    If I wore a hat, I would tip it for you sir. This is just about everything I could say, and better-worded at that.
  18. This implies that there are mods who just ban people without investigating. Name one. Just one.
  19. Not really.
    It implies that there were situations where the moderator(s), did not really try their best to help people, but were more concentrated to "who is to blame, whom to ban".
    And no names.
  20. Talk to EMC staff they will find the player and kick or ban them.I've been griefed before.But i hope you get help!