Good Grief, that's a lot of Grief!

I think when I first started as a new player a year ago, I shook my head when I ventured out into the frontier for the first time. It was just riddled with holes like a big broken block of swiss cheese-grief. With that being said, what as players of EMC do to make the areas surrounding spawn look better?

Could there be a rule that:

1. Designates certain people as spawn re-builders for each SMP.
2. Under this title, the rule set would be strict to ensure we're following "No griefing guidelines" where as:
2. a. The griefed area is indistinguishable as a home residence -- no bed, no locked chests, no signs showing ownership, it doesn't even look like a structure at this point. The re-builder has authority, upon taking screen captures of location and state, the ability to tear down what remains and rebuild the land with dirt/grass for the next player to enjoy.
2.b. The griefed area is distinguished as a home residence, monument, or structure. The home is easily identifiable of "who" lives there by locked chests, signs, or some protected pieces of the property. The area that is greifed (perhaps they built it some of their home and forgot to /buildmode like a lot of us forget to do) is visible, an eyesore, and can be easily repaired. The re-builder is allowed to replace the griefed blocks - after taking a snapshot of location and grief repair area.
2.c The repairs above, once performed, are logged on a re-builder forum page for staff reference.

-_- Materials are player collected, bought, or mined.
-_- Repairs done are required to be submitted the same day or when the player decides to log off for the day of their repairs.
-_- Repairs done to semi-griefed homes must be done with buildmode OFF to allow owners of the said structures access to make modifications to their liking if they ever do choose to re-log back into EMC.

Just a thought, I've met players who had similar thoughts to mine and actually tried it only to get banned temporarily because the rules are black and white; however, I think a little grey space would be beneficial to the overall look to our frontier spawns on all SMP servers and give those with time on their hand and the love of this server a chance of making some improvements so the player experience is as awesome as it can be.

Thoughts?

I REALLY like this idea. If anyone does a company or something about it, I would HAPPILY become very involved in the project. It's a great way to take care of our community and the environment that we stand on!
Few questions, if this were ever to become a thing:
How far out into the wild would we go to fix greifing?
Are you going to make a company/something else to do this?

Good Day Mochoa_Frap,

Thanks, I knew there are like minded people here in this forum! To answer your questions:

How far out into the wild would we go to fix greifing?
A: If you look at ANY of the directional spawn locations in any SMP server, the first 1000 block radius area is just riddled with days worth of repairs. I'd say there wouldn't be a cap on how far out we would be willing to go, but I'd say it would be a systematic approach where you'd start close to the spawn and work your way out.

Are you going to make a company/something else to do this?
A: Great question! I'd say we would need representatives from each SMP to make their own sister organization. It would really be up to how many people would love to get involved and if it became too large to handle as a singular group of re-builders that we would then break it out to sub-groups from the main tree.

Again, all of this is all hot air unless the staff/admins of EMC want to put a pilot in place.

I myself am a home resident of SMP9.

I myself have wondered for years, "why do people grief on Minecraft SMP servers?" It is a very philosophical question. I have been apart of the EMC community since Spring 2012. Through the years, I have done many public builds on the SMPs -- mostly mob farms and pathways. My most recent projects (as of January 2019) are at or are connected to SMP1's Stream Base.

"No Griefing" is one of the most emphasized rules on Empire Minecraft's SMPs. It is a parallel to common real-world laws of civilizations, whether they are written or not. You are not allowed to destroy or steal someone else's property (house, car, furniture, etc), without his/her consent. Violating such laws will lead to punishment, possibly imprisonment for a prolong period of time. In real-life, that is a jail cell or prison; Minecraft's equivalent is an account or IP ban.

Grief is an emotional state after a sincere loss. That loss can be many different things. In Minecraft, we most often think of "griefing" as:

• Breaking blocks or entities belonging to another player's creation.
• Killing the other player's mobs.
• Stealing from them, especially their more valuable resources, like diamonds and food.

However, those three points are not the only definitions for such disobedience. They are just common examples for what griefing is. Generally-speaking, griefing is when somebody does something to your property that you perceive as wrong. Nearly all of us can agree that destruction, death, and theft to someone else's belongings is wrong, but what about placing blocks to escape a person's build easier and not removing the scaffolding you made afterwards?

Gameplay artifacts: unintentional terrain damage, cheap block patches, scaffolding, random beds, lock signs on chests and other utilities, anonymous dirt shacks, etc. are not direct means to cause grief. They are more like a mess players did not bother to clean up. You may imagine that most parents and preschool to elementary school teachers teach kids to clean up after themselves. However, those lessons do not always carry over to places where the adults are not present.

Let's address the most common artifacts on EMC.

Terrain Damage
Creepers are the number one cause of this artifact in Minecraft, in Survival Mode.

On SMP8, on the south 'End' side of "/wild c", I dug out and built a general underground mob area which is protected from grief thanks to EMC's Anti-Griefing mechanics. I originally built it to help supply myself with gunpowder for firework rockets, but I might give more attention to it someday. Players go after creepers mainly for gunpowder, but without a ranged weapon, they will likely make the creeper explode before they can kill it.
I propose that we make at least one designated mob arena in every Frontier world, near a spawn outpost. You can think of the one on SMP8 as a prototype.

The majority of other artifacts from Survival gameplay are from players placing blocks. Lock signs and beds are the two most problematic leftover blocks. The former requires the owner's intervention or a long-term absence to remove. Meanwhile, breaking a bed could change the player's respawn point far away from where their bed was located. However, the rail line to Stream Base on SMP1 -- /wild ne -- has way too many beds. You don't need a hundred beds right next to Spawn, especially out in the open! You might even get unintentionally spawn-camped!!

I absolutly love this idea i would love to make a sister company on my home of smp3

I know tons of people that would LOVE to help me do this

Heya! This has been done a few times in the past - I believe the most recent is Shel's FCC (Frontier Clean-up Crew): https://empireminecraft.com/threads/fcc-the-frontier-clean-up-crew.67773/#post-1235180

Even though Shel has moved on, perhaps yall could contact the other active members on the list to see if they would like to continue their work under different management?

Good luck! Let me know if you need any tools - I have a bunch just gathering dust...

Thanks, I'll look into that!

I can't begin to wonder what kind of tools...

lol i am gonna start one on smp3 soon

So I read carefully all posts from FCC and read carefully what Krysyy had posted and am coming up with these conclusions and/or observations and issues.

It seems like a lot of people want to help. I understand it doesn't look like to be a EMC Staff funded/controlled group -- which was expected and intended. FCC kinda fizzled out due to real life happenings. We all come and go -- it's a game we enjoy to play so to label one person "the boss, leader, founder, etc." will always have a consequences if they decide to go AWOL from their duties and leaves others questioning it. I would like to think this is a core community effort to continuously keep EMC beautiful as much as possible. While I understand there should be a roster of those who are here to help, maybe a possible chance of different colored names in EMC? (pushing it, I know, but hey it's always good to show appreciation to those wanting to do the tedious work right!)

So, I need to understand the happy ground rules for folks looking to make spawns more user friendly.

First one comes to mind and comes to everyone's mine are 1000's of situations like the album below:

https://imgur.com/a/lmsTFQu

As shown in my screen capture album. Places I boxed in green would be land needing reformed and OK to repair. What gets very gray for me is the structures in red. As you see, a lot of the structures are "floating roofs" or random pieces of cobble and wood. If we terraform the land back to its original state but leave the floating pieces of structures, we're in no better shape right?

I understand Staff are not salivating with fork and knife waiting for the first block broken of a home to ban someone; however, what's the limitations or allowances of say putting a wall and floor down for the home with a door? Or replacing the grief on the cobble wall by removing the dirt and placing cobble back where it used to be? I also understand the over analysis FCC post shelluser provided stating that it would also be considered griefing if we just covered over someone's tunnel -- that I get, be mindful of tunnels and make sure they poke up to the surface -- maybe put a door structure for its entrance maybe when trying to make better the land.

If it's a black and white rule (if it's player placed, don't touch it), do we simply terraform and /report all griefed homes for staff to repair or would we have some allowances to put back walls where walls once stood so it looks like a home or platform?

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With a server as unique as EMC -- where land isn't EVER reset which is absolutely awesome to have --- I think we need some kind of compensating control to help maintain the grounds for other players to enjoy. I think we have a base of people wanting this to occur; however, I need to understand the Staff/Admin side of the house to ensure we have a very cohesive understanding of what is OK and what isn't OK to do as at the end of the day, it would be awful for anyone who had absolutely pure and good intentions to be banned from a server in which they love and only wanted to make it look great again

I agree with this wholeheartedly and i have a solution to fix the one leader problem maybe don't have a single leader have like 2 and if they go missing have someone who would be ready and capable to take over it but i am definitly gonna start something soon on smp3 for this

I've seen a few threads about frontier cleanups on different servers, and I think it's great. When I was a new player I remember having a troublesome time getting anywhere at the smp3 wilderness so having a few people get together to do this whenever they have time or feel like lending a hand to the community would be spectacular, but there shouldn't be a rule for it rather just if people feel generous or giving back, etc.

(Sorry for my ramble xD)