Is it ok to remove partially destroyed builds?

This. Every situation is different so we're unable to give general permission. There's also significant risk with destroying a build a player owns without talking to staff as it can be reported for griefing, which is subject to a permanent ban.

Because of this, always contact staff members for review/assistance if there's an issue with a build you do not own.

Always willing. Fair warning: Gonna monologue a bit but I find reminders on this are helpful from time to time. OP and 607 shouldn't read this as directly addressing them. This is just a general reminder to the community

Occasionally we get split in a few directions helping multiple players. We'll generally be free enough to help within a few minutes if you're able to wait in this case. But if it's an active situation (i.e. someone is taking TNT to your wild builds right now or turning local chat on a different SMP into a testing ground for their latest bot spammer) make sure to mention it in your reports to staff as those situations will take a higher priority and make it easier for us to investigate and address. The more information you can give, the easier it will be for us to investigate and intervene.

If tied up with other issues or physically unable to help for some reason - usually it's because we're halfway out the door to an IRL obligation or unable to get on forums/in game due to being mobile - see if there's another staff member on server that can help. As 607 said, use /staff to locate then /tell username message. Please do not attempt to ping community chat to see if SS is available but vanished. Sometimes we are. Sometimes we aren't. But when we are online and vanished there's usually a reason for it and we may have to ignore your ping because of that reason. Rest assured though that if we are online, vanished, but available and we see something going on, we will step in to address it.

If you think you need SS help and none of us are available, talk to a staff member that's available in game. If they're unable to help directly they'll contact us through staff channels or have you send a forum PM to us if we need to get involved. If you know you need our help (SS service for instance), feel free to contact us on the forums directly. If no one is in game, go to pmss.emc.gs if you have a forum account. You can sign up for one under /register if you don't have one or if you cannot get one for any reason, e-mail us at support@empireminecraft.com for assistance.

Side bar note: if you're muted for whatever reason, you can still communicate with staff through /tell if there's an issue you need us to address. So if you get muted, don't think all of this post is not applicable to you.

If no one is available at all and the issue is urgent, report it. If you know who did it, use /report. If you do not, send a PM on the forums if no staff are available in game to help. Make sure to add Krysyy, a couple SS, the staff member you were talking to, and a few other moderators as well. If you're not sure who to include, put Krysyy, the staff member you spoke to (if applicable), a couple SS and every staff member listed on the forums as online in the PM. If you hit the invite cap, reduce the # listed as available. Krysyy and staff can bypass that cap if needed to add more once we get it. On that note, don't restrict who can be added to the PM when you send a PM report please as we may have to add more staff or other players to the PM to address the issue you're raising.

Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not report an alt or random players on /report if a rule violation, especially a theft/griefing, occurred and you do not know who did it. Staff policy is to treat all reports received as genuine until proven otherwise. If we get a report saying "my base was griefed" and the reported person is a bob or jane doe or an alt, that account is going under the microscope when we pick up the report. Time will get spent looking into that account as a result when it is better spent talking to the reporter about what happened, looking at the impacted builds or stopping the active griefing. If you don't know who did it, contact staff in game to help. If there aren't any, send a forum PM to the same staff group mentioned in the last paragraph.

I also don't recommend pinging staff on Discord if there's a problem. While true that some of us are available on there, we are all there in our non-staff capacity and will only be in a staff capacity in the event of an issue directly on Discord. It should not be assumed the staff members online on Discord are also available on the server/forums.

Additionally, we have no way to confirm that, as an example, you're the same person x that reported an issue 5 minutes ago in game. This is because Discord is on a different system and our ability to fully integrate their system to ours is extremely limited. Because of that, confidentiality policies prevent us from discussing those issues with you outside of the forums or in game. So if a report or issue needs to be discussed, it's always better to move it to the forums or the server for that discussion.

Finally, we ultimately rely on you, the community, to help us make sure rule violations are located, addressed quickly and incidents kept to a minimum as much as you rely on us to do the same. If you ever have a concern about someone violating the rules, contact us. If you think someone violated the rules, but aren't sure, feel free to report it. While there is a rule saying that sending false reports is actionable by staff, I want to make it clear that you will never get in trouble if the report you send ends up being wrong but was sent in good faith. That rule is not intended, nor will ever be intended, to discourage reporting if you believe there's a problem staff need to address.

*takes breath* I'm gonna get coffee and food now LOL. This thread isn't the best place for follow-up questions on this as we'll derail the thread really quickly. If you do have any feel free to send me a PM.