So You Want to Run a Minecraft Server?

[SneakyPie]

Note: This thread is mainly for my amusement and to bring awareness for what us staff members actually go through. This thread will see continual updates over time.

I have learned a few things over the past several months heading up a Minecraft server. Well, not a few, a whole lot of things.  Some good, some bad, and some that have made these eight months seem like eight years. So you want to run a Minecraft server? Well take a seat, little one and I will tell you what to expect.

Added by SneakyPie
It’s impossible to please everyone.
“These are such good ideas! There’s no way anyone would not like them.” – SneakyPie (Naïve and Stupid Phase)

Yes, I said that before. I believe it was to Collin. These were the days of Version 1 of Escapecraft which began in early September 2010. I believe it was about instituting a plugin (although I cannot remember what the function of it was) which was met very negatively by the player base and was eventually pulled reluctantly by me. 

Was I right and the players were wrong?  Was it the other way around? It doesn’t matter. You can make seemingly the best possible choice for the server on the whole and that decision will make at least one person pissy and suddenly start their period.  I have had players swear at me, make threats, threaten me on a personal level, been told they hope I die, and other pleasantries.  You will not be loved by everyone. Ever. It’s impossible to please everyone. 

I’m sure many decisions I make are not popular (for instance someone went full-retard angry on me because we didn’t use a whitelist) and even if you handle the situation while keeping your cool and being respectful, it doesn’t matter. They hate you for no discernable reason. You need to get used to this happening often and develop a thick skin.

Now I’m not saying that if your decision is met with opposition you should trash your idea. Don’t do that at all. It may be good to reconsider the pros and cons of you decision, but you’re doing something wrong if you’re aiming to please everyone. When you try to please everyone, you lack a true direction of where you server should be going. In fact, it’s good if you get some people angry. A server needs direction and it will end up being a complex mess if you’re aiming to make everyone happy.

Make your decisions carefully, make sure those decisions are taking your server in the direction you want it to go, and make sure you ruffles some feather along the way.

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Added by SneakyPie
Most people are illiterate (or are afraid of words).
"All of the rules and info are on the forums now. Everyone will be able to read them just fine." - SneakyPie (Naive and Stupid Phase)

I enjoy reading. Whether it be a novel, short story, article, or a forum post, I enjoy the written word. I naively thought that just because the rules were written out in a clear and concise manner on the forums, everyone would want to stay informed and read them. At any given moment I would say that at least a few players on the server have never read our rules page on the forums even if they know it's there. And players wonder why we can't have nice things.

This is something you'll certainly have to get used to. Well, I'm not entirely sure if it is possible to get used to or even accept as "normal." (Hint, it's not normal) Early on I thought it was best to keep players as informed as possible about news, rules, and other events that may be happening. This sounds great on paper. The problem is that almost everyone is too lazy to even begin reading whatever is is you painstakingly wrote out for their benefit. 

I can't even begin to ell you the number of people whose bans never would've occurred if they simply took the few minutes to read. I mean, seriously, it like requires no effort to do so.  So just expect that no matter what you write, it will be generally ignored by the masses to their detriment.  The thing you need to accept is that you cannot make them interested to do so and it's not your fault if they don't. I used to blame myself all the time because I couldn't think of a sure way to get people to read, but then I realized that they're mainly all lazy. Or really are illiterate.

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Added by wokka
Murphy always shows up when you least expect him.
"Shutting the server down to install a new raid controller card and finish the OS upgrade, should only be down for 2 hours..." - wokka

Ask any true geek, best estimates for hardware upgrades (or software changes) are worse than weather prediction; doubling or quadrupling estimates may not be enough.  Maybe I should use Star Trek's Scotty method, if you can do something in an hour, ask the Captain for 2 weeks to do it.

It never fails, especially when I am on a timetable, things rarely go as I plan them.  You'd think me inept, and I mostly am, but there is always an unthought of variable that pops up and delays me on a project.  This is exacerbated when my gf is expecting me at a certain time, and I think Murphy knows this.  And yes, I am partially inept, at work we have planning meetings, then meetings about that meeting, to get approvals, then I have a team that just critiques my plan, to find gaps in the plan.  Here, I just wing it. Sneaky, I need to hire a larger staff...

The aforementioned upgrade, didn't take 2 hours, almost 14, but I should have known better, but I'm an optimist, and luckily for you folks, I'm pretty hard headed and keep pounding away at something until I have it running the way I want.  Eventually bukkit will even be in a state that I'm happy with.

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Added by SneakyPie
You will ban people and you will ban often.
“I just… I just can’t do it. Collin, can you come ban this person please?” – SneakyPie (Too Nice Phase)

I am too nice and compassionate to a fault. For the longest time I could not bring myself to ban anyone even if they clearly deserved it. I always felt I would be ruining their day or something else absurd along those lines. Thankfully, I had Collin during those early days as he effectively became the tool of my wrath and did ban anyone I requested without remorse. I was always amazed at how he could ban anyone and continue a talk about his cats. If you think Cho is scary, you haven’t been around long enough.

Now, I know that me requesting the ban was still in actuality me banning someone, but that’s not really the point. I had comfort in the feeling of not pulling the trigger. I don’t think I personally banned anyone until a month or two in of the server’s life. My problems still persisted however as I enjoy giving people second (and third, and fourth, etc) chances. Why? I ‘m not sure. Maybe it’s because I believe players can change and the ban is their wakeup call (which has been the case for a few active players today).

Don’t let your personality work against you. If you’re concerned that it will, bring in others to help (Ops) that you know are the opposite of you (like I did with Cho and Collin). The fact is you cannot enact justice solely alone without some bias and need others to help put others into perspective for you. I gave too many people second chances, and even though I still do so with some people today, it has significantly declined over the months. I’m getting “better” at handling me banning others and have gotten to the point to where I sometimes I don’t even think about it again if they were notably bad.

Don’t be an uncompassionate tyrant either. A lot of potential bans can be chalked up to mistakes whether it be on the player or yourself. You don’t want to ban everyone who has done the least bit wrong and broke one rule. You will soon then be feared, then hated, then find your server without any players on it. It is better to be loved than feared and if you don’t believe me on this, all I ask is for you to try it out. Bring in some Ops to take on the role of being feared. There are tons of people who would enjoy it.

What you need to do is find a balance. There are times to be compassionate and give people the benefit of the doubt and there are times where you swing the banhammer and not look back. If you’re unsure where the balance is, surround yourself with people you trust who can help you find that balance and once you do find it, stick to it.

I'm not perfect in this area and some of the Ops will tell you this is a constant struggle for me. I'm getting there though.

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Added by SneakyPie
If something goes wrong on the server, it’s “your fault.”
“I keep getting this error “Bad Login” whenever I try to connect! Fix it! – You know who you are

One of the joys you’ll experience in setting up and running your own server is the plethora of problems you will have. They will come at unexpected times and can (and will) crash the server and ruin your day. If it hasn’t happened yet, don’t worry, it will. You will also come to learn that simply because you host a server everyone will assume you are also an expert on all server-related issues such as programming plugins, router problems, and the best friend of Notch himself.

I remember in the early days I was always fighting plugins and trying to get them to work (thankfully, Wokka has taken over this responsibility). Sometimes, after hours of trial and error, I succeeded while other times I didn’t. What helped me get through those times was the constant nagging players would generously give, telling me to fix the problem that I somehow caused. When the problem was unsolvable and I was forced to switch to a new plugin, I found that I fixed the problem but then caused a new one. Players were now forced to learn something new. The horror.

It never fails either. You could finally get all your plugins working correctly, connection issues solved for players (which 99% of the time ends up being their fault), and can finally enjoy playing the game on your server, but then Notch will release an update and break everything. Now, you have the opportunity to sit down and wait for the plugin authors to catch up to the new update and also listen to constant “When’s the server going to be up?” in a variety of flavors. Mostly the kind in an indistinguishable form of broken English. You will be constantly questioned until everything is finally updated again.

Now, don’t let me get you down, I’m just being realistic about the eventual problems you will run into. A server is a finely tuned, complex machine and it must be treated with love, and like any family member, you can love them for a while, but then they’ll do something off the wall insane and you’ll hate that you came from the same gene pool.

Really the best solution I have come up with in dealing with these technical issues was to outsource it and never deal with them again. Problem solved.

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Added by SneakyPie
You can’t go at it alone.
"We won’t ever need more than five or six Ops." - SneakyPie (Naive and Stupid Phase)

This one is a bit relative as it depends on the scope of your server. If you're running one just for a few friends, you can get away with handling everything yourself, or a few others. If you're trying to run a public server, what I'm about to tell you is pure gold. This was something that was learned over time as we continued growing larger and larger and it's nice to see that growth hasn't slowed down. The more players you get, the more help you will need. Simple as that.

The approach at first was to bring on as few Ops as possible which worked out fine when we only had a few dozen players. But once we broke into the few hundreds and then the few thousands, my mindset peed its pants and ran in the opposite direction. Right now we have twenty-four folks on staff (some more active than others) covering the most timezones possible. So far this has been working out quite well. However choosing those who help is a completely different matter.

Figure out your weaknesses and promote people who can fill those gaps. Find those players who possess the qualities you're lacking in. I did exactly that with all the first Ops that got promoted (now it's put to a vote). When we were first starting out, it was much easier to get to know each player on a more personal level and gauge their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. This is more difficult than it sounds and more often than not, first impressions aren't everything. Some people who I thought had amazing potential turned out to be rather the opposite and mainly wanted the position to finally enact their plans of internet domination or enjoyed the prestige of the position.

It's hard finding good, devoted help. It's as difficult as locating the person who just cut one on a crowded elevator. You will make mistakes, but every time you will learn from them.

A plus of learning people's strengths is that you can then dump responsibilities on them, lightening your load. With enough help, you can then begin delegating tasks while you focus on more important things. It's good to be the king.

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Added by wokka
Best of intentions never carry the day.
"I think this is ready for the live server" - wokka

Testing upgrades, new plugins, and other changes is critical for keeping the server running smoothly. We try to do this for every new feature we add or upgrade we apply. This is good practice and all businesses (worth their salt) do this. While Escapecraft is not a business, it's good to try to treat it as such, just because of the good practices.

When I first joined the server, we had a lot of outages, and this wasn't due to any fault of the moderating team, we can blame them on Notch for rolling out new features. Plugin authors need time to update and resolve problems with the new features. The big decision for the mod team then becomes, do we run with known problems or take the server offline (and thus putting up a temporary server). Lately this hasn't been as much of an issue, we can tell people not to update and we keep running on an older version. Many times in the past, a plugin was disabled because of the issues, and havoc insued. Chaos is only fun for a short time.

Now, all new plugins or upgrades to plugins, or upgrades to bukkit, go through a test process that we are developing constantly. The whole server setup is copied and setup with a new IP, then we test all of the plugins, hoping to find any issues before we apply the upgrades to the main server. Unfortunately, I can't get every moderator on at the same time, so we don't really put a load on the server when the testing is done, as I found out with today's upgrade.

Case in point, I kind of rushed the upgrade we did yesterday, upgrading to 1.4. I was fighting two plugins that were giving a lot of problems, thankfully the players didn't see much of this, and I was anxious to get 1.4 in place. I rushed the upgrade and we had a lot of issues last night and this morning. Thankfully, the problem plugin was updated during that time frame and (knock on wood), it seems all is ok.

I'm human, we all are, and sometimes I don't have enough time to do everything I want to with the server, in the time I have available. I do have a full time job, and also a social life, but I also feel that I have responsibilities to you as a community. I also couldn't do this without the mod team, they are a crutch I can't do without. SneakyPie talks about this in a previous post, and its very true, we have a great team that he has built.

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Added by Haxx
Sometimes, things just don't work.
"But the config files are all set up right - why doesn't it work!?" - Haxx

Let's face it - Minecraft is buggy. It's buggy and broken and sometimes I wonder why we bother playing it at all. And if you want to run a server, you're jumping in at the deep end. Prepare to be bombarded by bugs, errors, glitches, mistakes, oversights, and bringing your entire server to its knees simply because you forgot to put a capital letter on a certain line of a certain file somewhere.

Usually (he says, rather hesitantly), your assorted mods and plugins and whatnot will play nice together. But then another update rolls around and suddenly you're left in the dark. Nothing works anymore. Everything's been rendered incompatible and useless.

But that's OK. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get to work updating everything to the latest version, while calmly (with luck) reminding the players that the server's not quite ready for them yet. And sure enough, eventually you've got all the plugins and things updated, and you start your server.

But what's this? The server console is spitting errors at you like there's no tomorrow. "But I'm sure I set it up right! See, I followed the instructions to the letter and wrote all the files out correctly and everything!" So of course, you go back and rummage through your configuration files looking for seemingly insignificant mistakes. And yes, sometimes you'll find them, and fix them, and everything's back to normal.

However, oftentimes your setup will be correct, yet the plugin in question simply refuses to work. Well, guess what? This happens. More often than you might think, in fact. Even if everything looks A-OK to you, and according to wherever you got it from, its supposed to work, this happens. And there's naff all you can do about it besides waiting for an update.

In short, when you're faced with a wall of errors and you know you did everything right, don't freak out. Calmly tell yourself that it's the plugin developer's fault, then go let him have it on the forums.


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Added by wokka
Don't take things too seriously, and don't burn out
"I need a vacation!" - every mod and admin at one time or another

A minecraft server can quickly take over your every waking moment, they are only as good as your community, and the time and effort you put into them. A great community helps too, but many of us have seen a good community, along with a crappy server, not stick around for very long. It's a partnership and needs to be that way to grow.

You can also burn out very quickly if you do let it consume you. It's good to take a break, play some other games, hang out with friends or family, just basically get away for a bit.

For me, Portal 2 came out at the exact right time, maybe Notch did that on purpose, but 1.5 came out and the Mod team gets a vacation. Until things are updated, we get very few new players, no patches or updates will be needed, and we can relaxe to some extent on the server side of things.

Also, we just did a big release of new content, so its good to take a break from all of the hustle and bustle of getting something new rolled out.

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Added by SneakyPie
You're everyone's parent.
"Ah, they'll be able to settle their differences by themselves. They don't need any Ops to step in." - SneakyPie (when will I ever learn phase)

When you run a server, you are King and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. You may set aside some responsibilities for others to handle to help lighten the load, and you may let some others be in charge of certain aspects, but regardless of what you do, you're still at the top. Sounds awesome, right? Hell yes it does. You have all the power when you're at the top and you have anything and everything.

What they don't tell you is that when you're at the top, you are basically a judge. People don't get along. It happens in the real world and it happens in Minecraft. People will bicker and argue over the stupidest things and you will have to deal with it. You may have set up some mediators in place to help deal with these problems, which is a great practice, but some players' problems will undoubtedly come to you. When People and the Internet get together for a raunchy evening of mistakes and shame, they give birth to the equivalent of a monster known as anonymity. And they abuse it.

You will find people will go absolutely insane in a multiplayer environment and you can count on it happening in your server. When each monster rears its head, you will hear about it. Even if that monster turns out to be a joke gone wrong, people will get upset, and you will hear about it. You will hear about everything. Whether you want to hear it or not.

I'm only 24 years old and I already have been a parent to seemingly several hundred children. How do you deal with such a thing? Well, one method is to tell the players to grow up, but that rarely works. Remember, they act like children and when they don't get the outcome they want, they will piss and moan about it whenever you're around. You won't be able to please both parties involved in the problem that's for sure either. Sometimes a good ban or suspension works out pretty well to put the fear of God in them too.

Really what I'm getting at is that there's no foolproof way of dealing with these issues. It's not fun and it's not easy. All I know now is that I wish I could give a lot of people up for adoption.

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Added by Lord_Mountbatten
Your humour is not their humour.
"This is hilarious, I'm sure everyone will think so too!" - Lord Mountbatten to himself, many a time.

I could've added something on any numerous amount of interesting and insightful things you learn whilst moderating and generally being important, but I decided to expound on humour, and why sometimes something is only funny to you. This is similar to the section on the fact that not everyone will like you, but in a less professional sense, and written in a better style. Hopefully some of you guys will take a lesson from this, because hey, I'm far more likely to get away with it than you are.

Now whilst I am unlikely to stop carrying on in the pursuit of amusement, there have been a few times in which what was intended to be a harmless prank (in my eyes) ended up causing trouble, either for me or others. Of course when that happens, you have to own up to it - it's only fair, and though I probably won't change much, I will at least check excess if I feel it's getting to that (some of you might say I do not check excess one bit, in which case I obviously have a different definition of excess than you do, hence the existence of this section).

Here's a good example. I found it immensely amusing, and others probably did too, but not everyone. Givemeabreak432 made a thread in Forum Games that primarily involved choosing who you liked more out of the two posters above you. Whilst Give told me it was more to do with who you knew more, I felt it was a popularity contest, and judging by some of the posts, a few jabs were made (in an implied manner). So, in my typical fashion, I did not maturely lock the thread to prevent it from getting out of hand (though it may never have got out of hand anyway), but noted that many posters were choosing Givemeabreak, even when he wasn't one of the above two. I latched onto this, and changed every post to simply "Give.", and then every poster to him as well.

I had to answer a question on it during a Fireside Chat, Fuzz ended up posting how he was going to stop posting on the forums for a while, and Give was issued a warning, which meant I had some owning up to do. It's quite likely Give did not find it amusing, nor Fuzz, but I did, and other people probably did too. That's just what happens I'm afraid, and whilst I have the history and easier access to the people that one must give explanations to, not everyone does. Yes, we're all available via PM, but you can see how it's easier for me to explain myself than for someone with my sense of humour who is relatively new to the server.

So, perhaps I won't do a thing to change my ways (and some of you won't want me to, the others not so much), but I still encourage you not to take things too far when doing something you find amusing. I might not find it funny. /ban

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Added by wokka
One person's trash is another's treasure
nothing witty came to mind...

The title says it all, something that one person builds can be beautiful, in their eyes, and look like trash to another. This can also go from one extreme to the other as well. A historic symbol built in game by one person, could be very offensive to another. Top it off with someone that just doesn't see it this way, or refuses to understand that rules have to be followed when it comes to something offensive.

Oh the joys of dealing with someone that just argues and argues about censorship, and right to creativity and throw in privacy. We've heard it all, and sometimes from just one person. This server is not a democracy, nor is it a free state, you are not entitled to anything here, and some people feel like they are.

We have a great community here, but all it takes is one bad apple, a new visitor seeing something potentially offensive, to be driven off, post on a forum somewhere, or tell a friend, and the next thing we know, we have a bad name. None of us here wants that, so, if you see something that needs to be looked at, grab a mod.

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Added by Delphi
Your First Ban
You'll definitely feel the weight of the ol' hammer.

Having been around for a few months, I have seen my fair share on this server and like to think I have had some experience (albeit not as much as my fellow posters). Of course, not all of this experience has been enjoyable, or even pleasant but it is one thing: necessary. You'll meet the players who are grand, who you get on with very well. You'll meet the players who are well meaning, those who are quiet, and those who dislike some rules and moan a lot, but follow them nonetheless.

Then you will meet the players who have no respect, or perhaps intelligence for that matter. The people who seem to log on to ruin someone's day by destroying their creations, or boost their self-importance by screaming how much they hate you, your family, and the server as loud as their caps lock allows them to. You will meet the players who spend weeks gathering trust, only to blow it into a thousand pieces by unleashing their pent-up hatred at you, and buildings in general. For some of these, a warning or even suspension pounds the error of their ways into them, but for others, a permanent removal of their place on your server is needed.

If you get promoted, you'll learn a lot, and be forced to remember a lot (a helluva lot). You also have to learn this quick, and learn this well, as you are thrown right into the deep end from the get-go. The extensive command list that just grows and grows needs to be memorized, along with Moderator etiquette, ethics, and all of the rest. It's all very intimidating as your first real shift starts, and you stare at the masses that you are both trying to protect, and teach the rules to. You will have to do some telling off and the like - however, none of this is as daunting as your first ban. It'll happen. It'll happen fast, and you have to be ready for it. An alert will pop up, and you'll follow it. You will question the culprit, and deem that a ban is necessary. Your first ban will give you an adrenaline rush, no doubt. You'll shake a bit, and feel that if you don't ban this person within the next five seconds he will grief the whole server and the world will end.

Now, you will fumble a bit, and press a couple of wrong keys, but the feeling will fade and you will get used to it. 60+ bans down the line, if I still got that rush, I wouldn't be very efficient, and ol' SneakyPie would do away with my rank (well, probably for worse than that). One thing is for certain: the moderating experience will make you a stronger and more mature person. If not, you're in it for the wrong reasons.

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Added by wokka
Planning for the future seems impossible...
"Sneaky, we can add as many worlds as we want!" – wokka (Naïve and Stupid Phase)

Back during the early days of Bukkit, early 2011 months, the folks writing bukkit implemented multi-world support, as soon as a stable plugin came out that allowed this usage, we added Fyra and Future Shift. It was a glorious time, we were hearing complaints about Ver 3 and the lack of building area (HA!), lack of available clay and no infrastructure, new players had to walk to go find areas to build.

These new worlds solved this problem for us, for a time. Then we expanded by adding everything! PVP, Creative and a Hub world to host everything nice and neat. Then we went nuts and added a lot more. For those of you who were around back then, it was great, until the server filled up. Then the Bukkit devs finally told me what our performance problem was, too many worlds. Their new code didn't come with a disclaimer not to add 10 worlds. Each world was having to share ticks with each other and the server couldn't handle it. I invested more in better hardware and it helped, but with each additional feature and patch, it kept geting slower, no matter what we did to optimize.

Then, then! The big flush and combining of the worlds into continents. It helped, but also taught me something valuable, and 2 years later, I regret some of my decisions.

I don't have a crystal ball, I can't see into the future. I've tried, I suck at it. We have a great team of staff and they help, tremendously, we wouldn't be where we are today with out them. But with our best guesses, we don't know what the future holds, but we do try to plan for changes, and we do try to guess at what we'll need, and what will help us run a better, more stable server, that is almost lag free.

All I can say is this, I'll keep trying, the staff will keep trying, and I hope you have a good time playing here.

[vallorn]

yeah but your directon is what makes us a great server. and there HAVE been hicups more recently too (looks at "Darwin") where youve made changes to improve stuff.

[Jake55778]

It's impossible to please everyone

Just use bacon. Everyone likes bacon.

...Well except maybe vegetarians, but I bet that has more to do with the ethics of it than the taste.

[wokka1]

nice post Sneaky, I like

[Laptop_mini]

It's impossible to please everyone

Just use bacon. Everyone likes bacon.

...Well except maybe vegetarians, but I bet that has more to do with the ethics of it than the taste.

I much prefer a nice pain au chocolat...

[DuplicateValue]

Have some Garfield Minus Garfield for your troubles.

[Tehbeard]

an excellent read sneaky, I look forward to which ever article deals with the innvetiable eejits a server aqquires (maccomo n comet come to mind), and explaining to your players that you are not in complete control of the server (updates, the hMod/bukkit issues etc)

It’s impossible to please everyone.

I can admit I've been angry at times (the two that stick out where health inventory wipe in ver2 and the ca11ex / security flaw induced minecart disablement) probably my most vocal on the first issue ( I lost all my diamond), and more annoyed on the latter. That said these changes were for the good of the sever (real survival, protection of property/crashes), proving you gotta annoy some people to do good.

So with the TNT ban i've been getting by alright. I miss ripping swathes of earth in seconds from IC, but I get that we don't want all the pretty cuboided cottages to go boom.

So as a long time resident of the server (from wayback October 2010), I salute you sneaky, not for making the popular decisions, but for making the right decisions.

Edit: this goes to the rest of the mod team/server monkeys, without you the reality this community lives in would not exist.

[MrWhales]

-snippy-

I much prefer a nice pain au chocolat...

yes please.

OT:
I havent read the rules page, but i think i figured them out other ways.

[nart_21086]

Most people are illiterate (or are afraid of words).

I am guilty of skimming this post until this title. =)

I am also disappointed in myself for my thin skin when it comes to "how do I gain Build rights?" and other popular inquiries of nervous, impatient newbies.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

OT:
I havent read the rules page, but i think i figured them out other ways.

Well yes, I never once read the Escapist's rules page, ever. I simply picked up what to do from the posts made, what was frowned on etc. Also, I hate navigating the Escapist; I'm not particularly fond of its layout.

I wouldn't recommend that here, though it takes stupidity to not figure out something like how not to grief.

You will not be loved by everyone. Ever. It’s impossible to please everyone.

Likely the best of the advice. Of course, it may be impossible to please everyone, but there are always certain individuals that you still need to make sure you're listening to, even if you're not going to heed what they say.

For instance, here's how I prioritise that:

1. Sneaky. Always listen to Sneaky. As a moderator, if I don't listen to him, I won't be a moderator for very long.

2. Our administrative/advisory body's members - basically the bigshots in the server. If I don't get along with them, well what on earth am I member of the royal family for? A good way to relate that to my past experiences is during WWII when I was with the Chiefs of Staff a lot. Politics will always play its hand - everyone has a personality you have to respect. The opinions of these fellows are very important to listen to at any rate. Once said opinions were even law.

3. Preferred members - oh noes Mountbatten, blatant favouritism! That's how the world works I'm afraid, and I will listen to the opinions of members I like - well who doesn't? I do like to look out for them and their interests at any rate (well, if I agree at all), though I wouldn't do anything like push for them to become a moderator or something.

4. Notable regulars (perhaps I'm neutral/don't like them) - they've stuck around a while; moderating tends to give you a different perspective on everything, so it's a good idea to listen to what the base thinks about developments.

5. Everyone else - you can have your say, but no matter how eloquent and passionate it is, Sneaky could say "yes", or more loquaciously, "no", and you've been defeated. Perhaps someone important takes a fancy to your cause and argues your case a bit further though - it's happened before.

6. Rude and annoying people - very ungentlemanly internet warriors - they don't have an ear from Mountbatten.

"Why did you write that?" people, including me, ask. No idea, just felt like it - also thought it seemed informative and even possibly interesting.

Well there you go anyway.

[wokka1]

I was about to sleep tonight and I thought of so ething to add to this Sneaky, hope you enjoy it.

[vallorn]

/thread

[MKindy]

Don't try to please everyone; just please yourself, and find people who like that.

[SneakyPie]

I was about to sleep tonight and I thought of so ething to add to this Sneaky, hope you enjoy it.

Oh that's a good topic.

I just added one on banning.

[XDelphi]

Oh wow, this was a really good read, it is nice to see how things around here started.

As for Collin being scary, my only encounter with him was when he placed roses all over (And I do mean, ALL over. Like, every available square) Draconax

Also, loved the section on banning.

[SneakyPie]

I think I'm having way too much fun writing these things. Updated about Server Problems.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

Well I'm enjoying reading them at any rate.

I remember for a fair while after becoming a moderator, whenever I came across someone doing something of a bannable nature, I'd have this big adrenaline rush (or perhaps it was nervousness) and would have to steady myself in order to actually type the command in.

More than 100 bans later, I think I'm past it now (if I had cats to talk about after banning someone, it'd be easy enough), though I'd like to think I've struck the balance Sneaky spoke of (if I haven't, tell me so I can ban you ).

[Milo_Windby]

I think I'm having way too much fun writing these things. Updated about Server Problems.

It shows you are having fun =D

And I have to say I am having fun reading them.

[MKindy]

You run a great server, Sneaky and Co.

[vallorn]

You could finally get all your plugins working correctly, connection issues solved for players (which 99% of the time ends up being their fault), and can finally enjoy playing the game on your server, but then Notch will release an update and break everything. Now, you have the opportunity to sit down and wait for the plugin authors to catch up to the new update and also listen to constant “When’s the server going to be up?” in a variety of flavors. Mostly the kind in an indistinguishable form of broken English. You will be constantly questioned until everything is finally updated again.

sneaky this made me fall off of my chair with laughter... im not quite sure why...oh wait "I Still no Vet..."

[Blackadder51]

I find this rather enjoyable.

[aflycon]

I think this is pretty nifty Sneaky, you writing all this just for us. :3 You should write more, it's really fun to read.

[Lathania]

Murphy reference <3 Also if you find him the Empire wants him back.

[Sir_Luke]

I agree, It's mighty fun to read! Might I ask why any retard would threaten you because HE joined YOUR server? Such is the way of life in escapecraft i guess...

[The Bum]

I agree, It's mighty fun to read! Might I ask why any retard would threaten you because HE joined YOUR server? Such is the way of life in escapecraft i guess...

Gee, ain't that nice?

[Sir_Luke]

I know! some people just needed to be banned from the gecko.

[DuplicateValue]

I know! some people just needed to be banned from the gecko.

You mean get-go?

[The Bum]

I know! some people just needed to be banned from the gecko.

Sarcasm, do you understand it?

[wokka1]

Really the best solution I have come up with in dealing with these technical issues was to outsource it and never deal with them again. Problem solved.

---

And all this time I thought I volunteered for it, but I think I was hoodwinked...

[SneakyPie]

Really the best solution I have come up with in dealing with these technical issues was to outsource it and never deal with them again. Problem solved.

---

And all this time I thought I volunteered for it, but I think I was hoodwinked...

Oh man, I got you good.

It's okay though, I updated with more content about finding good help and how hard it is.