I think this is an example of the change that needs to occur.

As staff we should be trusted to make the right decision between a mute and a ban. Whether or not some of us can make that decision is open for debate.

While that is definitely true, I repeat my earlier sentiment that said trust should not and can not be absolute. Think of yourselves like police officers or members of a government, yes you have earned your power and yes we trust you to use that power for the better good. To an extent. The difference at the moment is that there are rules and laws, checks and balances in place for police and government officials (not that they don't sometimes find ways around them...-_-') and for you there are none. How are we supposed to trust you absolutely when the "difference between a mute and a ban" can very easily be "I don't like you."?

You must trust in the professionalism that all of the Minetown staff are told to uphold and promote. We are not supposed to deal out cruel and unnusual punishment. We are not supposed to pick certain players to watch more closely than others, unless there is a VALID reason. We are not supposed to hold grudges and talk badly about other players or other staff members with or without their knowledge. We are not supposed to abuse our powers to benefit ourselves or our friends. We are not supposed to try and divide players or staff into groups of supporters for ourselves or other people. We are not supposed to let our personal feelings for other players or staff members get in the way of how we do our job.

We are supposed to be unbiased. We are supposed to do all of our duties. We are supposed to help the common player and keep the server as fun as possible, without interfering with anyone else's fun.

Can you trust us? Sure. Should you trust us? Well yeah we are the staff. Do I understand your concern? Absolutely.

I see I showed up late for this one. Most of this has been said over and over, but I just wanted to voice my opinion as well.

First off, I have a lot of respect for all the staff members, but I have to say that the inconsistency of punishments has been getting WAY out of hand such as people getting off scot free for admitting to using x-ray, or people getting permabanned for minor first time offences with hardly a chance to give their side of the story (I dont mean TPrezzle, he was begging for it). I'm kind of shocked to see that the first thread was locked, when just about everyone posting on it made completely valid points. When the server is funded by donations from members, the approach of "We're the mods, so we're right and you aren't" is a completely inappropriate and irresponsible reaction, and is nothing more than a way of ignoring a legitimate issue and avoiding dealing with it. That being said, I'm glad to see staff members are finally starting to respond constructively to the issue in this thread because, "if you dont like the way we run things, you can just leave", which several staff have said in almost those exact words, is not the way to deal with issues. All it will accomplish is to drive good members away from the server as well as prevent new members from wanting to join, which I find unacceptable with how much better this server is than the rest.

Well thats my redundant, possibly no longer relevant rant for the day.

As I said, the problem isn't that we DON'T trust you at all. Hell, we trust you guys a lot. Without you Minetown would be nothing but penis statues, hellholes, griefers, etc. just like every non-whitelisted server ever made for minecraft. The problem is that we're expected to trust you absolutely. Such a thing can't exist without some sort of a background "You can't screw me over" guarantee. It's like loaning a someone a large amount of money. If you don't take something for collateral they'll just walk off with your cash never to be seen again. It's human nature. We all know that, that's why a system where the staff is only really answerable to sawine and can decide the punishments to just about everything on their own scares the hell out of us. We all know sawine is busy, so the only real "collateral" we have is gone. We trust you with our large amounts of money because you're family to us, but, we're still leery about the lack of collateral. Understand?

(ow...I think I may have taken that metaphor too far and broke my brain)

The staff has had a bunch of new moderators. Some are more experienced than others and some are more strict than others.

I personaly am very strict and selective when it comes to what I do. I actualy banned one of my friends one month ago since he was suspected to use a kickspam program.

However, like Oki said in the above posts he made, alot of the bans recently and a lot of the "judgement" was not what I would personaly stand behind. However, the staff trusts eachother, it's just hard when there is persons that don't tell you things openly. But those people exists everywhere and you have to learn how to deal with them.

I'm a person that stands by the rules and stands by the staff members, however I actualy think that if anything needs to be done, it's already underway, because I trust sawine to make the right decisions. I trust him to pick the right people and won't question it until there is solid proof.

New people bring change and this is happening right now. At the end of the day however I don't want to go off at anyone, but there is some things that are not going right.

That was me.... just saying... and it wasnt on purpose...

It wasnt innapropriate in my eyes... Colddev is my freind and I was joking with him. I didnt know he would go all 'RESPECT MA THAWTAY' and jail me?

It would be like you asking one of your freinds on the server (sayomie, i dunno) how there genitals were... he would laugh im guessing or say 'lolwut'

And I wasnt exactly 'spamming' ass. I said it about 3 or 4 times in different sentences, and not each right after each other. You did however warn prezzle to not say 'Ass' before i started saying it. So you cant say it was because I was 'spamming' it.

That being said, if ass and genitals are not acceptable words on the server (lol) then why are they not on the censor, because clearly that means they are not a problem. I think wether something is innapropriate language or not, should be left up to the censor because thats what its there for. If a word isnt appropriate then ask a dev to add it, not penalise someone for the use of it completely unaware because the word was not transferred to a name of a desert when posted on chat. I am not just speaking about what happened to me, I have seen people getting in trouble for saying ridiculously appropriate words.

Hello,

Glad I ate my breakfast and am alert this morning. Stuff just got real on this forum. I didn't really know TPrezzle and I don't know much about the bans etc. so I will not comment on those. However, I do have two things to say.

1) This thread should not be locked - not my decision of course, but I feel that everyone has been respectful on both sides of the fence and when a thread can grow this large in just a few hours it is obviously an important issue. Unless people start flaming or it all gets a little repetitive then it should stay open. I would argue it's the most important thread I've seen on here for a while.

Point the second) I don't think that there is a single person here who thinks collectively that the mods do a bad job. I think as a whole, everyone can agree we are lucky to have present, attentive and fair staff on hand to make the server run smoothly. However, inconsistency can be a problem. I'm not a mod but if I was and enough people were complaining about inconsistencies, I would take it personally as (although inadvertently) it would make me look bad too. If there has been one occasion when a friend of a mod was let off where a non-friend was not, that is one time too many. If there was one time when a pema-ban was given when on another day it was jail, that is one time too many. There are way too many good staff members on this server for there to be so many negative mod posts on this forum right now. I get that you all trust in each other, so you should, how else could it work, but maybe, when there are this many dissenting voices (seemingly from experienced players), there are one or two amongst you going against the grain.

Concrete guidelines would be great but hard to implement. Each individual is different and they will react to crimes in different ways. The staff are people too and they are prone to over or underreacting. I think what should ultimately be taken from this latest episode is that mistakes will be made, it's human nature, but, the current system for identifying and punishing these mistakes maybe needs some changes.

But we must be patient. I think the staff are willing to make the changes we ask for but if we try and push them through too quickly it will be a disaster. This will take time, and even then it wont be perfect. If you're searching for a perfect server, you'll never find a home.

And for the staff, thank you for what you do everyday, your work is vigilant. But please, be vigilant amongst your own ranks too, if there are a couple of bad apples in the bunch then they need to be educated, trained or possibly removed, otherwise all your hard work may be undone. I'm not saying that is the case, but with so much concern in the air, it is worth considering.

Everybody keep talking, it shows that you care about this server more than any skyscraper or stadium you build on it. It's Texas independence day y'all - I'm going to drink a brewery, have fun.

F15h3r