IGN: ThePhoenix
Reason for unban: Staff has gone soft on crime

@ThePhoenix is a player with a colorful past on the server, causing many disruptions and upsets throughout his time on CraftyMynes. He is guilty of the following:

• Griefing the server parkour by spawning a nether portal inside it
• Making sexist remarks in the Discord server (This elevated his ban status to permanent)
• Disrespecting staff's decisions when it comes to rule enforcement
• Bullying players
• Using incredibly racist language in his public Discord server
• Cheating by use of an unapproved mod

Not only do I find his behavior disgusting and reprehensible, but I find it utterly jarring that staff could overlook such transgressions and allow him onto the server. There was a time where even if you accidentally logged on using a banned mod, you were permabanned without exception. Now, times have changed, and there have been unbans based on players actually logging in with mods accidentally because of the decision on this guy. However, ThePhoenix admitted to using a mod despite it being a banned mod. Now, I've been a player on CM for a very long time, and to me this seems like a very clear cut case where the appeal should be denied, but for whatever reason, wasn't.

At least in Birdfrock's case, the decision was based on intent rather than outcome, and to be fair to staff, when the decision was made they retroactively applied the same ruling to other similar cases (and to play my own Devil's advocate, didn't apply it in others ).

I also find it incredibly interesting that ThePhoenix was unbanned after this debacle without any transparency for the players, in which the standard is that ban appeals are publicly viewable on the forums for accountability purposes. Then, following the resignation of certain administrative members, ThePhoenix was allowed back into the Discord despite being permanently banned. And now, we have the current situation.

This now begs the question, what precedent will be set by unbanning ThePhoenix?
Will NE0GE0 be unbanned as well?
Will other cheaters be unbanned as well?
If they won't be unbanned, why not?
Is ThePhoenix's case different from the others? If so, how?
Are the staff actually just playing favorites when it comes to unbans?
Will the rules be applied fairly and equally to all players on CraftyMynes?

I formally call for the re-banning of ThePhoenix, or for the staff that voted in favor of overturning his ban to publicly apologize to the entirety of the server, and unban other cheaters who also promised to "never do it again."
Thank you.

Staff decisions about bans have been incredibly questionable, to be honest the fact that Phoenix's permaban was overturned because of a private email exchange between him and Crafty that nobody would ever be able to scrutinize was the seed that really planted my doubts in the longevity of CraftyMynes as a community. All of these haphazard changes to staff policy in a desperate bid to retain the existing playerbase just reinforce my doubts in the server.

It's hard to take CraftyMynes seriously anymore, whatnot with Crafty's inconsistent re-appearances and months-long hiatuses, the general lack of staff consistency (a mod bans for use of unauthorized mods, well established as a permanently bannable offense, then their decision gets overturned by an admin because of a secret "decision" between the admins). We can't level any constructive criticism in an effort to help improve the server because the head guy who has the power to do anything disappears for months at a time, and then writes some long windy response about how he has no time for the server anymore. But he rectifies a permaban almost immediately and very actively communicates in the discord all of a sudden -- yeah, I totally buy that.

Everyone who has participated in running any sizable community knows the key thing to moderation is consistency. Everyone know how they should act and treat others, because they've seen what the staff will otherwise do to rulebreakers, time and time again. The moment you introduce exceptions and favoritism, the whole thing falls apart and nobody wants to participate in the community anymore.

I have literally no idea what will get you banned on CraftyMynes anymore, I have no idea if some dude dicking around with client mods in spawn or Lunar client will get banned anymore. Maybe they will get banned because it's an unapproved mod, or maybe they won't because the staff have all of a sudden decided that unapproved mods aren't allowed except for the ones they like, or maybe it's because there's nepotism in the inner circle of admins because of some secret emails between that person and the owner that were sent. Do the other banned players who spam slurs and sexist shit on the server get a free pass for their behavior by emailing the owner some sob story? This is absolutely not a positive outlook for any new players looking for a stable community to join.

Oh, and before you guys try and go at us because we're Team Eye, at least we've followed the rules, and if we fuck that up we take full responsibility. ;)

At the end of the day, CraftyMynes is owned by CraftyMyner.
If he decides to unban everyone then he has that right, if he decides to ban everyone, he has that right.
We are all playing on CraftyMynes at the pleasure of CraftyMyner.
He does the best he can, and I hope it’s all we can expect from anyone.

As for the rest of your rant, this is a server run by volunteers looking to give the best experience to like minded minecrafters. We may not always make the best or right decision, we may make different decisions now that some of the older volunteers have moved on.
One thing is for certain, not a single staff member is out to make CraftyMynes unfair, unreasonable, unplayable, or unfun!

We have a wide range of personalities on the server and appeasing them all is simply impossible. However, we do the best we can.

Crafty made these forums for us all to be able to voice our opinions, and I’m glad you did. Some servers don’t allow such things.
Your opinions and thoughts you carefully laid out will be discussed among admins and staff and we will do what we think is best for the server as a whole.
Thanks for your feedback, and happy Myning!

@Slainte_Alainn At the end of the day, CraftyMynes is owned by CraftyMyner.
If he decides to unban everyone then he has that right, if he decides to ban everyone, he has that right.

"It's crafty's server and he can do whatever he wants" is a thinly veiled euphemism for "we don't have any way to hold staff accountable." All major communities nowadays have a code of conduct which applies to everyone in the community, which includes both the members and moderators/staff of the community.

Everyone has a reasonable expectation of how moderators will act based on the CoC, and they are given an outline of a mechanism to follow when the moderation team acts out of line, usually via some kind of community management team that acts independently of the moderators or admins. This ensures that everyone will act in line and enforce community guidelines fairly.

As it stands, CM has no CoC or any mechanism that holds everyone (including the staff) accountable. The rules are applied to just member infractions, whilst inconsistencies in how those rules are enforced are brushed off as "the staff can do whatever they want," which you are doing right now with this very hollow-worded PR/ChatGPT-esque response. This builds absolutely no assurance in anyone that the staff will act consistently in a way the playerbase would expect.

Again, this is not a positive sign for a community that is struggling to retain players.

Crafty does own the server -- but, he, and you, and the rest of the admins, since Green said the "admins and Crafty" came to the decision, should be able to explain why Phoenix was pardoned for using schematic mods, and how that logic doesn't also exempt the actions of previously banned "cheaters" -- for example, the countless number of people using Lunar Client for minimaps (which have been accepted recently) and the armor hud (which is being replicated by other client side mods).

Here's some questions that I hope will illustrate the problem:

• What is wrong with armor hud? Does it provide an advantage over vanilla players? Surely, minimaps and schematics do too because they make the lives of their users easier?
• If they provide an advantage but it's an "acceptable" advantage like schematic supposedly brings, would armor hud be okay now? If so, given that Lunar client is used for its minimap and armor hud, if we accept both of these features then there's no real reason to ban people for using Lunar client and keep them banned, right?
• If we can't allow Lunar client, why do we allow these other mods? Doesn't that make this an inconsistent enforcement of the rules? Shouldn't the rules be changed to reflect this?

If there is a change to the rules that relaxes the punishments for what mods can and can not be used, this needs to be codified in a rule. It can not be decided by staff secretly making a decision in a private Discord channel that nobody from the outside can scrutinize. That's just a sheer lack of transparency, and again casts doubt on whether the staff can consistently enforce rules in this community in the first place.

Anyways, I don't care how Phoenix acts nowadays because I don't actively play on CM anymore, and all of that drama between him and me and Team Eye and the staff was all pretty much half a decade ago. This isn't some attempt to revive a grudge against someone I've previously had beef with.

What bothers me is the fact that staff is selecting one particular person and giving them so many chances excusing bannable behavior, without any clear reasoning behind it. Meanwhile, others were left permanently banned for using a minimap on Lunar Client with no second chances.

There's also gnomechild who would just say dumb shit in chat, and then got himself permanently banned and exiled from the community for typing ".crash," with absolutely no second chances. How does it make any sense that a bunch of chat infractions would be treated harsher than portal griefing spawn, disrespecting staff's authority in Discord, making sexist remarks on International Women's Day, and using unapproved mods? Those are all four different infractions that would all warrant lengthy bans on their own.

At least in Birdfrock's case, the decision was based on intent rather than outcome, and to be fair to staff, when the decision was made they retroactively applied the same ruling to other similar cases (and to play my own Devil's advocate, didn't apply it in others ).

Just to be clear on this I went through the logs of all the cases that were questioned at the time and looked at them very carefully.

I have always thought it was daft to ban someone who clearly logs on accidentally with a mod and immediately realizes and logs off.

However that wasn't the case in all of them, so some remained banned.

@j____a____r____d Crafty does own the server -- but, he, and you, and the rest of the admins, since Green said the "admins and Crafty" came to the decision, should be able to explain why Phoenix was pardoned for using schematic mods, and how that logic doesn't also exempt the actions of previously banned "cheaters" -- for example, the countless number of people using Lunar Client for minimaps (which have been accepted recently) and the armor hud (which is being replicated by other client side mods).

If there is a change to the rules that relaxes the punishments for what mods can and can not be used, this needs to be codified in a rule. It can not be decided by staff secretly making a decision in a private Discord channel that nobody from the outside can scrutinize. That's just a sheer lack of transparency, and again casts doubt on whether the staff can consistently enforce rules in this community in the first place.

(I cut out everything I'm not responding to for simplicity)
For the part I bolded: This is an easy one. We are trying to come to a more reasonable approach to somebody seen to be using Lunar, schematic mods or hud mods etc. that are not cheating mods. We won't be unbanning all previous accounts banned for these things because we don't recall the specific circumstance of every single ban in the past 10 years. Not to mention that it's a monumental task for almost no returns. Maybe if they specifically appeal it would be considered, I don't know. And don't take that previous sentence as gospel, it's just my thought personally.

Anyways point is we haven't come to a firm, written rule on those situations yet. Current idea is that it's something we intend to give a last warning on, instead of an immediate ban. We overturned a ban for a long-time player before we actually got to putting it down on (digital) paper because it was a reasonable thing to do.
Also there was no exchange between any staff and Phoenix about the ban. I don't believe Crafty and Phoenix had ever even spoken to eachother.

@Th3GreenGamer (I cut out everything I'm not responding to for simplicity)
For the part I bolded: This is an easy one. We are trying to come to a more reasonable approach to somebody seen to be using Lunar, schematic mods or hud mods etc. that are not cheating mods. We won't be unbanning all previous accounts banned for these things because we don't recall the specific circumstance of every single ban in the past 10 years. Not to mention that it's a monumental task for almost no returns. Maybe if they specifically appeal it would be considered, I don't know. And don't take that previous sentence as gospel, it's just my thought personally.

Thank you for the clarification. It helps if these decisions made using rules that aren't yet written down can specify that "there are planned changes to the rules which would lead to this corrected decision." As it stands, "the admins have decided to revert this decision" doesn't clarify that at all, and just makes the decision making look inconsistent.

@Th3GreenGamer (I cut out everything I'm not responding to for simplicity)
Also there was no exchange between any staff and Phoenix about the ban. I don't believe Crafty and Phoenix had ever even spoken to eachother.

This wasn't necessarily what I was getting at. I can understand that the decision for the "schematica ban" was made behind closed doors between the admins and Crafty, without the input of any other normal player, using the knowledge that the rules will be changing in the future. However, during the "portal grief ban" in 2019, let's call it that -- Phoenix was, notably, egregiously toxic to staff members in response to his punishment, in such a way that his ban was elevated to a permanent one , and the only form of recourse given to him was to email an appeal to owner@craftymynes.com.

Unless he privately messaged another high-ranking staff member to unban him much later, it is reasonable to assume that he took that only measure to appeal the permaban by directly emailing CraftyMyner. Either way, both scenarios are not particularly good for transparency since the appeal process happened entirely behind closed doors. To this day, it is unknown to the general playerbase how Phoenix was unbanned, because no ban appeal can be found on the forums for it.

Privately messaging or emailing a staff member to circumvent the ban appeal process is not a good thing for the community in general. Coupled with the decision to correct the punishment for the "schematica ban" it really doesn't look good.

All players are welcome to message Crafty with complaints about their bans or treatment. At the end of the day it is his server and his final ruling.

I get many players messaging me about their various bans and complaints. In such cases these are always investigated and shared in admin and a collegiate decision made. Where consensus cannot be obtained this is passed to Crafty.

I do not see how this can be made public.

We always endeavour to be as fair as possible.

@Tez1010 All players are welcome to message Crafty with complaints about their bans or treatment. At the end of the day it is his server and his final ruling.

I get many players messaging me about their various bans and complaints. In such cases these are always investigated and shared in admin and a collegiate decision made. Where consensus cannot be obtained this is passed to Crafty.

I do not see how this can be made public.

We always endeavour to be as fair as possible.

So to clarify, you're stating that it's possible to privately appeal outside of the forums ("messaging me") despite the FAQ stating otherwise?

What happens if I get banned?
... You do have the right to appeal your ban on the website (http://forum.craftymynes.com/conversations/ban-appeals). Start a new thread under the Ban Appeals section. Do not post your ban appeal at the bottom of someone else's ban appeal.

Can you unban ___?
The forums are the only place you could address your ban. In-Game-Chat nor Discord are the places for ban appeals. ...

If that is the case, that just goes back to my point about inconsistency. There are apparently two methods to appeal a ban: one is clearly documented and the most transparent for the community; the other one is secret, can happen literally anywhere like email or Discord, and blatantly contradicts what was publicly stated.

I'm talking about complaints.

Everyone has to put their ban appeal in public.

If they come to me having not done a ban appeal they would be told to do it on the forum.

Okay -- that still doesn't address that Phoenix emailed Crafty a ban appeal and was able to get the permaban from the server and suspension from the forums reverted.

> Everyone has to put their ban appeal in public.

So which of these appeals, then, was responsible for reverting the 14 Aug 2019 ban? Unless there is a hidden one I can't view, there are only these ones:

ThePhoenix's Discord Ban Appeal

ThePhoenix's Ban Appeal

Unban appeal

Ban Appeal

The Phoenix Discord Unban Request

Only the first one seems to be causally related to 14 Aug 2019, and that one implied that the server unban already happened.

If there isn't one then, again, I go back to my point about the whole inconsistency thing. If you've been banned from absolutely everywhere because you're excessively toxic to the staff and players, and all that's needed to revert that is a sad written email, that's not a good outlook for the moderation at all. The fact that even happened and it was quietly swept under the rug was always unsettling to me, to be honest.

This forum is for CraftyMynes minecraft server - for people that actually play on the server. You have had your say.

Locked.