Making griefers pay for their horrible deeds is one thing. Keeping the server's feel as authentic as possible is another thing. These two are terribly hard to combine, and that's why I fully understand the current policy regarding griefers/thieves. I have come to realise prevention is impossible, unless you are willing to change the way the server works. Repressive measures however, are possible without changing this feeling. I have browsed the bukkit plugin list looking for a solution, as leightweight as possible with merely the essentials moderators would need, and have found a great plugin: "Log". This plugin allows people with the right permissions to use a wand to check changes made to blocks recorded to the logs. It only records placement and destruction, which is basically all you need. Please discuss the current policy of anti-griefing here, and do share your thoughts.
I have looked into a lot of these plugins (even worked on one myself). The problem is that we are a very busy server, with hundreds of thousands of block edits a day (some days over a million). Managing this amount of data, and then searching in all the data with the "wand" would really impact the server performance. This is a tricky issue because yes I would love to catch more griefers, but I also want to keep a smooth server even with over 50 connections. With that being said I am working and in testing on a new method of a proprietary plugin to catch griefers that doesn't impact performance measurably. I can't give the details cause then people might know how to avoid it
Ya, I have seen this in use once, I have actually used it myself. It is very useful and i have been able to catch and ban more griefers than I ever though possible! Here is a video that shows it in use, go to 14:37 in the video to see it work: https://www.youtube.com/user/davechaos#p/u/59/vld6GnEfRqE
