What I most fear is that the first official news we will have will be "New 1.9 Server is up (posted 10 hrs ago)" You can't predict when 1.9 will be released, but you can certainly give a guarentee for how much warning players will get. It also would be nice if you would assure player that they will have time to give input. Here is a draft of what I would like to see in an official statement:

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Dear CraftyMynesCommunity,

A lot of you have been asking questions about whether CraftyMynes will make a 1.9 Server. Here is what we can tell you so far: When/If we make major changes for 1.9 we will announce them on this forum at least 5 days beforehand. Also, if any players wish to be involved in planning for 1.9 you can join the 1.9 planning group here (link).

Thanks
@p
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I would love to contribute to making 1.9 CraftyMynes awesome, but I want to do it in a productive way that will actually help and not cause more work for staff. For instance I could post suggestions and ideas for villager trades, but I've received no indication that this is wanted/helpful.

Please don't mistake my questions for impatience. Take all the time you need to make a high quality server.

Peter (Pand1024)

Something else important. I imagined after waiting more than a year, " 2015 (was) the first year where a major update to Minecraft (wasnt) released" That 1.9 would be released almost imediatly in 2016.

Dumb ass Dinnerbone had stated in October "We are aiming to get Minecraft 1.9 feature complete at end of this month" So by my maths they are 3 months behind schedule.

Then jack ass Jeb says, "Minecraft 1.9 will not be released this year. We want to fix more bugs before release, and keep the game stable over the holidays"

SOOooo... As far as i can tell, it could be 3 days, or 3 months before we see a 1.9 release. Why do i say that? You may ask.... Well the 2ND snapshot of 2016 was released today. 16w03a[1] is the fiftieth snapshot released for 1.9.

MINECRAFT SNAPSHOT 16W03At