Best Posts in Thread: PUBLIC BANS

What about us who have worked for the server for countless hours and played an integral part of rebuilding the server after it was stolen from Fuzzlr and played a key role recruiting many of the great staff and architects this server has known?

There have been many admins this server has had, including Cooleysworld and Klutchdecals that wouldn't have even been staff if I hadn't encouraged them to do so.

Should I get the right to speak my humble opinion respectfully?

 

Ban messages should remain between the customer and the server. As you can see from a majority of these posts public ban message only serve to provide entertainment to the current playerbase. Additionally you run into instances where players weaponize this information to use against the person banned down the road.

Additionally you open up the avenue for players to criticize a staff's choice on ban amount / message for something that gains the server nothing.

 

Public bans and kicks are now private. We will be sure to continue giving the correct reasoning for all bans and if you believe there is a problem you can always file a staff comment.

 

I mean this in the most not-staff-bashing-way: you know what would be an even better way to gather community research? A public town hall meeting in discord, in which we talk about this and other topics. That way people can voice their opinions rather than being keyboard warriors, because lots of things get misunderstood this way. One of the trademarks of "old meep" was the town hall meetings, they were fun and brought the community together, and stuff got done - Fuzzlr hears things right away, as well as the admins.

 

So first off this was done to stop the staff team from banning for stupid reasons, not for the enjoyment of a bunch of people who want to laugh at each other. In the end public ban messages are toxic to the community and if you want to keep them public you are promoting toxicity.

On a personal note Kling, you should probably ask admins before making stupid public polls which won't be effecting their decision.

Good luck with the pointless poll.

 

Although I completely understand where you're coming from, why change something that doesn't seem to be negatively impacting the playerbase? Allow me to elaborate a bit.

I do concede that this is somewhat childish when used as an indirect disciplinary system (do something stupid -> get banned -> that's announced -> possibly get made fun of). And I do appreciate your standpoint of looking at MeepCraft as a business, and not simply a server made for fun. But unless I'm wrong here, and I might be, public bans do not harm the playerbase very significantly. People usually don't leave as a result of a couple people at the very most (usually, it's one troublemaker who pokes fun at someone for being banned) slipping a snide little comment in about an earlier ban.

My point is, from what I can tell, MeepCraft is receiving enough donations to remain operational, and that's enough in my book. Fuzzlr arguably already caters to small children (a non-lucrative demographic) by implementing family-friendly restrictions that are not favoured by most of the 14-18 playerbase, and this appears to not be harming the server too much. The playerbase MeepCraft currently has appears to enjoy the public ban system (and the maturity of that is questionable, but that isn't the point), so why fix what isn't broken? Currently, only two people out of 29 voters believe that it should be removed, and only five are indifferent to it, versus 21 players who would like to see it continue.

Despite all that, there may be something I'm missing here - I'd like to know if that is the case. But from what I know right now, it appears like a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" scenario here.

EDIT: This no longer accurately reflects my views on this, I've reviewed my opinion a few posts down.

 

That is a great way of looking at it, and to be honest I probably should have weighed the pros and cons of public bans themselves, as opposed to simply talking about why it's not doing that much harm right now, from what I could see. However, I've reconsidered what I originally said, and yes, it does actually appear like there's nothing to be gained from displaying ban messages.

No one's going to leave the server because "they removed public ban messages!", but they could leave due to harassment as a result of this. Of course, one could argue that the problem lies with troublesome users here - although, in all honesty, it seems like the thing that's happening here is that we're creating problems that don't even need to happen.

So I suppose my final stance will be that no, this is an unnecessary feature that doesn't really benefit the server other than providing a short second or two of laughs for some players, and certainly won't encourage donations.

But allow me to digress here and note that I absolutely agree with your stance on being family-friendly. If I remember correctly, someone discussed this with Fuzzlr, and he used the defence that he wants to make MeepCraft "a safe environment for all ages" (not exact words, but I don't think I could find the post if I tried, haha).

And with that, there is a severe misconception, that being the fact that little kids do not already know swear words and are not exposed to anything inappropriate. Small children have proven, time and time and time again, that they have very little respect for their peers online (they believe they're anonymous -> someone angers them -> they start using all of these new cuss words they've picked up), or at the very least, that they do not have the maturity necessary to be contributing members of an online community.

I'd love for the server to be open to players of all ages, and it still would be even with looser restrictions. How about those kids who don't actually know inappropriate language yet? Although rare, those kids are likely even younger than the kids I've already discussed - and it's a common theme among children to not follow the rules. Whether this is expressed by scamming, being rude to others, stealing, griefing, they've really done it all. Not that this isn't a problem with players of all ages, but very rarely is there a child able to act maturely and make themselves worth keeping around in a community.

At the end of the day, MeepCraft is a business. And, as you've expressed and I'm sure you already know, small children are a playerbase that really are not worth catering to; they provide very little financially other than begging parents to donate, they cause a large amount of problems for staff, and they simply seem to have difficulty following rules. Likely a more controversial point, I'd like to mention that this is a Towny server. Most of the time, small children lack patience and they do not work for things. Instead, they would prefer to simply receive things now. This is why minigame servers are still hugely popular - along with the average age of Minecraft players worldwide decreasing, minigames are becoming more and more attractive to those who do not wish to work towards a project, which is the main goal of Towny.

Lastly, thank you, Deinen. It's always nice to see your posts since they are always rational and provide a viewpoint that I think MeepCraft really could always benefit from hearing.

 

What's the big deal if it entertains people? If you were banned then you deserve to be laughed at. Don't do illegal things if you don't want to be ready for everything that comes with it.

 

These are back?? I might visit more often for the free entertainment now c':

 

I enjoy seeing people getting banned, its like when people would spread gossip around school, great fun