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cepheid's thoughts #2: problems with staff and the server of CraftyMynes
cepheid's thoughts
Hey guys, cepheid’s thoughts is a series that I use to share a thorough version of my thoughts on the server. If reading a few pages of ideas and (hopefully) several thought out responses isn’t your thing, then this isn’t the thread for you.
Link to previous post:
cepheid’s thoughts #1: state of the server and possible reset

Introduction
I've played on CraftyMynes for a bit over a year now. When I started I played as a loner, I didn't know a single player on the server and I basically played single player and envied everyone I saw in chat on teams and having a good time. It took many months for me to begin talking in chat more, and eventually find friends and build trust on the server. My post about the roulette at the casino established both that I care a lot about making sure the server's economy is balanced and also that I'm able and willing to put in the time to get it right. The one thing I've learned about CraftyMynes as I gained more respect and also from joining staff is that the more I learn, the more problems I see. Here are some of the issues I currently have problems with, and I hope they will be taken into consideration:

CraftyCrates, heads, and other overpowered items
At the end of the last map CraftyMynes struggled with the problem of overpowered spawn eggs breaking parts of the economy. Fortunately everyone realized that converting spawners can't continue (and therefore the economy will be better preserved this map), but I still have problems with some overpowered items being given out, in craftycrates or otherwise. I could go into detail about many borderline items, but here are some recent craftycrate items that I believe are unacceptable to give out in exchange for donations:

The creeper heads (there were in 2 in the crate and I gave 1 away, iirc) and the sponges I believe are too difficult to obtain in-game to give out to players for free. Creeper heads especially would have a high value and it would be very difficult to find a seller and come to a price agreement if it wasn't for craftycrates ruining the market.

As far as I'm concerned, giving out totems of undying (not to mention 2 in one craftycrate) are similar to giving out god swords or god armor. I've heard the argument that it's okay to give them out since it's a vanilla item anyone can get in-game (it's not like giving out a sharp VI sword, for instance), but there's literally not enough mansions on the map to provide totems for everybody. In that sense, it might be even worse to give out totems than god gear (which I think everyone can agree is too powerful to put in craftycrates).

these arrows especially confuse me. It feels like one day Baron gets in trouble for giving out fortune cookies to everyone on the server (since they can be used to harvest crops) and another day a stack of fortune arrows are given out to vip+

My basemates and I used items similar to this on the last map, abusing the smite V at zombie and skeleton grinders. However small an advantage a custom, normally unobtainable item like this can give you, I believe it's wholly unnecessary and makes the game worse overall. Also, this could theoretically be used in pvp to create separation from the attacker without having to carry a second sword since most people don't put knockback on their pvp swords.

In addition, I believe Ina's birthday gift of a knock back 4 bone is unacceptable to be given out. Don't misunderstand me, I know Ina would never abuse it in pvp, but she could easily be raided/killed and have it fall into the hands of pvpers. It also sets the precedent that it's okay to give out potentially OP items that are not possible to create by survival players, which is something I'm starkly against. Here's her item:

Finally, a creative player recently spawned an evoker in my base just for fun, but the fact that I was able to kill it and keep the totem of undying is unacceptable. The totem is currently in my ender chest, although I'm willing to return or destroy it if asked.

admin heads
While we're on the topic of unfair items being given out, I still hold that the fact that admin heads being able to drop is the biggest "accident waiting to happen" for the economy on CraftyMynes. I would personally value rnc2011's head at 640 diamond blocks, and I would pay that in a second if I found out someone had one. Therefore, if he was ever careless enough to let someone kill him and get his head, it would be pretty much equivalent to him giving 640 diamond blocks to the player. Since I believe that all wealth on the server should be earned using traditional techniques (mining, farming, setting up shops, etc), I think it's unacceptable that someone's net worth could skyrocket in such a manner with only 1 or 2 swings of the sword.
Before anyone says that admins never get killed by players, I was able to kill rnc2011 recently when he went into survival at my base, but unlucky for me a head did not drop.
Obviously I am not intimately familiar with how head drops are run through the panel, but unless I hear otherwise I'm assuming it's relatively easy to just blacklist a few names so that admin heads can't drop, and I don't understand why it hasn't been done already.

Helping new staff learn the ropes

• Possibly the hardest thing to be consistent on for new and old staff alike is giving warnings on borderline names. I've heard from a LOT of staff members that when confronted with a borderline name they're even too intimidated to ask about it in staff chat in fear of looking like an idiot, even though that's exactly the type of thing that staff chat should be used for. Staff desparately needs a list of all names that have been deemed unacceptable, as well as some that have been allowed (neonjews, tacojesus, angeldust, b0xmuncher, intheA, bipolarmonkey, yomamabich come to mind). This is the type of thing I would've loved to help compile when I was staff, and I'm sure some of the remaining staff would gladly help do the same.
• In addition to borderline names, the staff (and the server) desparately need a list of some words that are allowed, are never allowed, and are allowed in only some contexts (e.g. "fuck" only allowed in non-sexual terms). Obviously some racial slurs are never allowed, but I STILL am not sure even after almost 6 months of being staff whether "bitch" or "dick" are allowed in any circumstances. The admins routinely contradict each other about both words, some saying they're allowed in come contexts and others completely banning them. It's extremely confusing and wholly unnecessary, I personally don't care whether they're allowed or not, but crafty and the admins MUST come to a consensus about these and other words.
• I also feel like the "orientation" for new staff is lacking a bit. Maybe it is just a "learn as you go" experience, but I do feel like new helpers need a little bit more help knowing the kick/ban process. It took me a month as staff before someone told me it's 3 kicks you give someone before asking for a ban. Maybe it just slipped my mentor's mind, but in the current state it really feels like it's on other staff online to walk new helpers through kicking and banning rule breakers as it's not explained well enough when they first get staff. I've seen this a bit in helpers promoted after myself, and I did my best to help them learn by walking them through the process of kicking people instead of just handling it myself. I'm not sure if it's a byproduct of the admins being so far removed from being a new staff that they forget that everything that's obvious to them isn't so obvious to a day 1 helper, but some things could definitely be improved.
• There are things you're not allowed to ask about once you get staff that nobody tells you about. Obviously I'm not going to spill any staff secrets, but when I first got staff I was very curious about how staff and the server worked. Nobody told me that there's some things that you just don't really ask about, and I felt like an idiot more than once trying to find out more about the server and it's staff because nobody told me that there's some things you just don't ask about, and just because you're staff doesn't mean that you get to know everything.
• In addition, people need to know what they are allowed to talk about publicly. I never knew that we were allowed to talk about the staff room publicly until Nysic gave a helper orientation in all chat, including what buttons helpers can/can't push. I also never knew that we could talk about the diamond test until players were being told their current score in all chat, along with how many more they needed to be #1 (although I guess some old ban appeals contain screenshots of diamond tests so I guess that's public knowledge).

Secrets
Obviously some secrets regarding the safety of the server/catching hackers/upcoming projects/etc. are completely necessary in order to keep CraftyMynes running without a hitch. However, for some reason there is an epidemic of secrets going on between staff members that I really don't understand or think are necessary. The amount of gossip and shit-talking of both other staff members and community members is insane, even though not everybody might see it. It took me a long time to build a lot of relationships on the server, but the more I learned about staff and the server the more these secrets kept popping up. This is obviously a very hard section for me to write without either spilling a bunch of secrets or just saying "trust me guys, it's a problem," but I've heard secrets that my basemates can't know about, secrets that some admins tell me but other admins aren't allowed to know (some significant ones of these even before I got staff myself), secrets where staff say how upset they are with another staff member and how they do their job (a ton of these), secrets about upcoming projects, and so many more. I'm expecting some measure of pushback against this section since I can't provide hard evidence without betraying trust, but just because not everyone hears these types of things doesn't mean they don't exist. I got pretty deep into the staff of CM before I started seeing a lot of these myself. I really hope in the future the staff of CraftyMynes can be more transparent and be more honest with the community as well as opening up more of the staff to constructive criticism instead of having staff members shit-talk each other behind closed doors.

sknup's base
For reference: Skup's Base Protection
One secret that's now public that I can talk about is sknup's base. I personally don't give a shit about sknup having admin protection of his base, but the way it was handled by the admins is pretty unexcusable in my eyes. Some of the admins act like there was no problem with protecting his base, but if there really was no problem, then why was his protection kept so secret that even many staff members (including myself) weren't allowed to know about it. As far as I'm concerned, the only 2 reasonable ways to handle his protection were:

1. Inform the community from the beginning that sknup's base is both unraidable and will carry over between servers. This way people are at least aware of the rules of the server they're playing on, voting for, and donating for
2. Once his base was discovered to have protection, remove the protection and admit that a mistake had been made (even move it first so it wouldn't immediately be raided, I don't really care)

Ultimately this is Crafty's server and he can make the rules as he sees fit, but the community absolutely has a right to know those rules and the exceptions. In my eyes, it gets more complicated when people are voting and donating for a server and then realize that they've been duped to some extent by the admins making exceptions to the rules. Everyone should ideally play by the same rules, but in the case that they don't the community has a right to know. I'll reiterate: I personally don't care that sknup has base protection, and for all I care he can be given creative to help him build better. However, what I disagree vehemently with is how the admins kept it a secret and expected no backlash.

Confusing rules
I want some more consistency with the explanations of some of the rules. For the last 6 months I've been trying to figure out whether things like pumpkin edits, low fire, low shield, or ore highlighter edits to texture packs are allowed but can never sem to get a straight answer. Even the other day I responded to this post trying to bait an answer from the admins about pumpkin edits to no avail. this post suggests that low fire and low shield edits are unfair in pvp an therefore aren't allowed, but people seem to post screenshots of pvp-edit packs on the forum every day and don't get in trouble. Apparently batty's coordinates plus was allowed on the basis that the same effect is possible through optifine but that effect isn't possible through optifine leaving me confused why this mod is still allowed. In addition, Forge has been repeatedly denied , but if someone can figure out a way to use batty's coordinates plus without forge please let me know, because I can't get it to work and I think batty's mod is pretty insane in some settings.
As with a lot of other things in this post, I don't particularly care what is and isn't allowed, but I do care about consistency. I just want crafty/the admins to have clearer rules to make it easier for players to figure out what they can/can't do and also for staff members to answer questions about such things (I had a few players ask about pumpkin edit and low fire texture packs when I was staff and I struggled to answer their questions, even after asking in staff chat).

Double Standards
At this point, I believe OtherGreenGamer will never be considered by the admins to become a staff member. Normally I'd be fine with that, there's a reason that only admins have a say in who becomes staff, as there's many factors to consider and obviously not everyone who applies can be accepted. However, my issue is that I believe Green will not be considered ONLY because he has hacked in the past. I think this is a double standard since Tezzer has xrayed in the past and was able to remain as helper (at the time) on a new account.
Either ALL hackers are able to be redeemed in such a fashion, or NONE of them are. Personally I don't care which way the admins decide to go, but I think that it is unfair to set such a double standard. I just want everyone to be considered in a fair manner, and I think the community of CraftyMynes deserves such.
I apologize in advance if I'm completely misrepresenting the admins here. For all I know, Green will either get the rank of helper or is/will be rejected for other reasons (in which case I'm way out of line) now that he's old enough to get the rank. I understand that some players should never be staff, and others will be capped at never getting past helper/mod2/etc for certain legitimate reasons that only the admins should decide upon, and that's fine. However, I have seen considerable evidence to support the notion that he can never get staff, as I'm not the type of person to take this public if I wasn't 99% sure.

Bad decisions
Over the last 6 months or so, as far as I can see 2Chill has contributed more to the server than ANYone else, even more than any of the admins (with the sole exception of maybe Crafty). Even though he's severely under-credited, I see all the things he's done for the server behind the scenes, including getting bows working in the arena, suggesting both the lottery and the community piggy bank, spending more time doing staff related things (like catching hackers rather than working on his own base) than any other staff, and so much more (a lot of which i can't even talk about). I have tremendous respect for all he's done for the community I've cared so much about, and he certainly sets a good example for what staff members SHOULD be like (although obviously not everyone can commit the same amount of time to CM). With that in mind, I can't understand to promote R4 to mod 3 over 2Chill. I'm not posting this to disrespect R4, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to have them both as mod 3, but I really cannot follow the admins' thought process on this one. In his recent absence CM has lost their single most consistent and best staff member, and the community has certainly suffered because of it. For any staff member there's only 2 valid reasons to not promote someone: 1. they haven't proven themselves yet, or 2. they're not mature enough or for whatever reason they have hit their limit of how high they can go. Normally I respect the admin's exclusivity on these decisions, but in this scenario it's just absurd to think 2Chill has anything left to prove, and it's equally ridiculous to think that he isn't a good fit for mod 3. Since he hasn't been promoted I have to assume he isn't wanted at higher ranks. I can't imagine a server that would reject a staff member as effective as 2Chill is a server I'm interested in playing on.
To the admins: please just admit you made a mistake. I'd have tremendous respect to the admins if they could just admit an oversight and promote 2Chill to mod 3 as well, it's certainly the right decision for CraftyMynes as a whole.

Refusing to admit mistakes
Unfortunately, like in 2Chill's case the admin's not admitting to any mistakes seems to be a serious trend. I first saw this all the way back when the casino opened and I was begging people for 8 hours to change something, but nobody admitted any problem until I farmed 30+ stacks of coins. There's always going to be bad decisions being made, but I wish I played on a server where the admins were able to own up to their mistakes and fix them. The admins stuck with the OP villagers at spawn despite significant pushback , and the hostile environment toward suggestions directly delayed my reset post . Perhaps the most straightforward example of this was with the wool trader that was implemented. When it was found to be overpowered, I thought it would've been easily handled by just saying "hey guys, sorry I fucked up this one. It won't happen again." but instead the admins didn't admit any wrongdoing:

Sorry to particularly single out Baron on this one, I think it's a problem most if not all of the admins can have at times, but I really don't think it's unreasonable to expect the admins to just admit a small mistake, it would certainly earn my respect more and make CraftyMynes better as a whole.

Other significant cases of refusing to admit mistakes include the handling of sknup's base (keeping it a closely guarded secret) and not promoting 2Chill. It would be extremely refreshing for the admins to bridge the gap between themselves and the rest of the playerbase, because currently it feels to me like the players are more separated than ever from the admins.

Staff's resistance to suggestions
Perhaps my biggest gripe with the staff on CraftyMynes, I think too often suggestions from the community are simply rejected without any though or real consideration. While I understand that not all suggestions are good suggestions or can possibly be implemented, it's important to listen to the community at times since the survival players are the ones most affected by many decisions being made. There are good and bad reasons to reject suggestions, but I think it's important to keep in mind that respected players can have terrible suggestions, and stupid players can have amazing suggestions. Every post should be taken for what it is and judged on whether it's a positive move for CraftyMynes as a whole and not just the feelings of a few players. Too often suggestions are met with anger or just disregarded, which I can't stand.
more reading on this topic:
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3889-the-future-of-spawn-eggs
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3325-mob-griefing-and-fire-spreading
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3656-remove-or-nerf-all-spawn-villager-trader
https://forum.craftymynes.com/3254-allowing-cheaters-to-play-on-alts

Conclusion
Ever since I began to get more involved in the CraftyMynes community I've seen problems with how the server operates, especially with regards to the economy (which I am very passionate about). When I applied for staff, it was my goal to use a slightly higher position in the community to attempt and influence the changes that I thought were necessary. This goal was always more important to me than simply enforcing chat rules, although I certainly tried my best to improve on that aspect of being staff as well. It is one of my beliefs both inside and outside minecraft that sometimes in order to earn the respect of your superiors you have to (tactfully) step on their toes a bit and disagree with them. Ultimately some of my strong beliefs about how staff members should be allowed to behave combined with my stubbornness to relinquish said beliefs lead to me being demoted. Only time can tell whether demoting me was the right decision for CraftyMynes, but in the time since one thing has become crystal clear to me: I can never be satisfied playing here as a rank lower than staff since I'll always want to make changes to the server but I'll have zero influence in actually making those changes. Therefore, I've already begun playing on the server less, and i feel that trend will continue unless things change. Maybe with time I'll learn to just live with some level of disappointment and feeling like I failed, but it will take some getting used to.

Closing thought: at this time I've provided more public constructive criticism for the server than possibly anyone else. I hope going forward staff will be able to respond better to criticism . I think the behavior of a lot of staff members needs to be changed, and I hope it can be done peacefully without hurting anybody's feelings, as we all want CraftyMynes to be as good as it can be, even if I may decide to leave soon.

I have a lot more I want to talk about, and I may also edit this post and/or make more comments to contribute more. For instance, I don't think CraftyMynes can ever be the #1 vanilla server in the long run with the current voting system as the current system is non-competitive and the wrong types of solutions are being pursued.

https://forum.craftymynes.com/3143-is-this-cheating-staff-pls-help
This thread says fire or shield edits are not allowed, but I asked the admins for clarification before I was demoted and couldn't get a straight answer. I think the status quo is that they can't really ban anything they can't detect (like X-ray)

The winning number was 3230, meaning that @just_a_penguin is the winner!

contact me or one of my basemates when you're online to receive your prize, and thank you to everyone for contributing!

final list, with 6005 total "tickets"
(ticket numbers) - player name - total votes
(1-91) 3ddy 91
(92-196) Jilm 105
(197-727) Tez1010 531
(728-853) Rybye 126
(854-1024) Tezzer 351
(1025-1355) GoofyGuy12 151
(1356-1703) sknup 348
(1704-1716) Pimpcy 13
(1717-1841) Jordi223b 125
(1842-1884) OPtimusjag 43
(1885-1987) Carl_Sagan1 103
(1988-2228) humfrydog 241
(2229-2367) Stone_Warrior 139
(2368-2533) sirchristopher10 - 166
(2534-2568) Nestado 35
(2569-2925) TimmyBoyT 357
(2926-2989) Mayorga 64
(2990-3582) just_a_penguin 588
(3583-4102) Dennari43 520
(4103-4289) xeniac88 187
(4290-4396) Cileklim 107
(4397-4533) Retrochewy 137
(4534-4999) NutjobBob 466
(5000-5206) GrinningBobcat 207
(5207-5394) Abbasilol 188
(5395-5397) Catgoddess21 3
(5398-5451) AttackTeam 54
(5452-5549) OtherGreenGamer 98
(5550-5578) gk100c 29
(5579-5612) Shiba_Ina 34
(5613-5774) iwarriiori 162
(5775-6005) greanprowler101 231

The drawing will be conducted mementarily, good luck to all contestants

Entries are now closed. final entrant is greanprowler101 with 231 votes.

I have decided not to allow r4iscool1 to enter as he has access to creative

I will consider allowing @R4iscool1 to enter since he's the fringe case, and release my decision a few minutes before the drawing

For everyone else, i will close entries in the next 3-5 hours and post a full list of participants and ticket numbers before using an online random number generator to select the winner

I will be on the server for a short time before closing the entries to allow for any last minute updates to vote totals and participants

@Abbasilol got it, thanks for entering and good luck!

GrinningBobcat 207

Gtfo Blaine
On a serious note, at this time i am allowing towel gang members to sign others up for the lottery. Just show your votes to wblaine adamblakely beedobi custard masterdragon myself or any of the others and if you ask nicely we'll sign you up without you having to take any screenshots or figuring out how to post on the forums