[Denied] Auto unprotect blocks

Hey EMC so I run a public guardian farm that is less than 100 blocks outside a protected outpost in the frontier and as such, I run into a lot of destroyed land, random builds, and occasionally, just a couple blocks that are placed randomly, and are protected. None of these blocks are in the way of my build but I do enjoy cleaning up the land and terraforming a little bit. I have recently run into a small area with a few blocks such as trapdoors and stone in the form of a tiny, abandoned hut. Now the catch is, the player has been derelict for over 200 days (219 days as I am writing this). I'm not sure if it's just my luck or timing but I always seem to be on whenever staff is not so there is nothing I can do to remove said blocks. I was thinking that after a set amount of days, when it is clear the player is not too much into EMC anymore, that their blocks become auto unprotected. My rationale is that if the player is really that worried about his/her build being destroyed when they go derelict, they can just vote to gain another week of protection, and resetting the counter. My initial thought would be somewhere around the 50-day derelict mark, so a total of 80 days being off the server. Thoughts are much appreciated! Thank you!

While i neither agree nor disagree 100%, I do personally believe if they joined and played less than 3-6 hours and its past 30 or 60 days since they joined... allow us to break their block. Maybe some kind of detection could search for random block placement. Such as a random piece of glass with nothing but dirt around it.

I just found another block, a crafting table, player has been derelict 482 days

+1 from me i think this is a great idea

While I understand the struggle you are dealing with, I have to disagree with this. Random blocks or not, they should remain auto-protected. Removing this would defeat the whole purpose of auto-protection; to ensure your build, so long as it follows EMC rules, remains forever.

If you have questions about random blocks being removed, you can always PM staff on the forums including the SMP and coordinates.

I know how the whole protection system works, I have had countless blocks removed and it takes quite a while for staff to unprotect many blocks, an issue I have ran into in the past. Plus 482 days of derelict? There's a point where you can tell a person is not coming back, and this player has long since passed that mark. If a player really did care about their blocks, I'm sure they can find time to vote once a week. I don't think the auto protection was put in place to protect one crafting table indefinitely, rather to ensure larger builds won't be greifed by newer players who do not yet understand the rules of the server.

Things happen in the real world. I still do not agree with this whatsoever.

Take myself for example. I was derelict for almost 3 years. I did not have the time to get online, or to vote. Should my blocks have been auto unprotected for others? I don't think so. It's simple though. You just PM staff on the forums with the SMP and Coordinates of the affected blocks, and they will get back to you as soon as they have the time. You just need patience.

Knowing that everything I built was protected was one of the reasons I came back to the Empire. I would not ever vote for this idea to be implemented. This sounds more like a "convenience" matter, rather than an actual issue.

I am totally against something like this.

It really comes down to the fact that breaking a block placed by another player is still considered griefing. If the person has not been on in a while then simply contact staff with the coords (maybe include a screenshot) of the item(s) that need to be removed.

This is especially useful to you seeing how you seem to have timing issues with being on when staff is or vice versa. If you PM them (and you can include multiple people) then one of them can deal with this issue. I am not sure, but I think you may even be able to use /report to have it dealt with also, but I would need staff to verify that for me.

There are also possible exceptions to this rule, but that would be something that staff would still have to rule on and not us players.

The auto-protection for things like this is indeed quite annoying. There should be some other avenue than the current system but I am not a fan of the proposed suggestion here. I have had trouble having single floating slabs removed from what was obviously my build for silly reasons. Quote: "They might come back and want to finish their build." A build that I did, they had a single floating slab *sighs* I digress. It is much more of an issue with large public builds and of course the closer you get to spawn(which is why everyone recommends you don't build near spawn

Once the ability to claim areas comes out that will remove issues like this as you will be able to restrict/control who can do anything in the area(s) you claim.

My whole point is not saying entire structures and bases are to be unprotected, but when a player leaves a torch on a single piece of stone brick floating in the air and it stays there for years, is it really worth the effort for a private message on the forums to staff? There have been times where I waited weeks for a staff response on the forums only to have the resolution to my issue be postponed even longer. I get large structures should stay I'm not fighting that. I'm more on the side that is against small, like 1-5 block structures that obviously have no intended permanent function 15 blocks outside a protected outpost.

Edit: Is there a better idea you can see to get around this issue? Or is PMing staff the only option

Well the problem is that I don't think the coding can be set to only cover large structures as it covers everything a person places. I don't think there is a way, that is feasible, to not cover single placed items unless they are able to code it to do a search for other items placed by that same user before I goes into protection mode. I think that could end up bogging down the server with additional queries for everything that a player places. It could also lead to structures have gaps in their protection if they are already not protected.

An option may be to remove things like torches from the protection system, but not sure how that works.

I am not even sure if all staff have the ability to break broken blocks or not. It may only be the Senior Staff that are able to do that.

As for an easier solution to getting them removed, depending on which staff are able to remove the blocks, I am not sure. If only Senior Staff are able to do it, then maybe giving Mods the ability as well could help get things resolved faster as there are far more Mods on than there are Senior Staff.

Other than those things, I really can't think of anything that wouldn't end up ruining the grief protection system.

Edit:
Maybe something else that can be discussed would be a system where builders can put in requests to have those small (possibly useless) structures removed by staff. What would you think about something like that? Could become kind of part of the reporting system or something?

I like this plan a little more, my only worry is that staff will get overwhelmed with requests, thats why I suggested the automatic aspect of the plan.

I'm going to agree with Rob here. Just because build isn't large and magnificent, doesn't mean that the builder didn't put a lot of effort into it. If someone leaves and then comes back, they should be able to expect their builds to still be there (unless there was a dimension reset). I can see it for one block kind of things but anything remotely resembling a build should be safe.

PMing Staff on the forum is the option to use. The /report feature should not be used for this.

Removing blocks/block protection is a case by case basis type of issue. Also, some items have value and Sr Staff may want the option to remove the item and place it in the Players /vault in the event they return. We have seen quite a few time Players come on and leave after a short time only to return 6 months or a few years later and pick up where they left off.

So, we are not going to setup an auto-unprotect system. This will continue to be handled as is by Staff through the forum.

I will add that if you are not getting a response to your forum PMs the best practice is to bump it and add Krysyy.

Thank you!