It's only happened a few times on 1.8 but most of the time it was ok, however, 1.9 is a different story. At least once a week we have a rogue farm. One of the issues that come with dealing with reporting this issue is when they ask for a "force crash". It's not easy to do on a multiplayer server and I wouldn't want to crash a world with 40-50 players on it (the amount need for the bug to occur) also it dumps all entite cords, like players and stuff so I would have to report it as private, then it would get very little traction.

It's not just the monuments...

It's happened before, I join the server only to find out we have 20-30k entities.

I think one of the most interesting things about this stats page is the fact you can see when a new hacked client comes out, or minecraft updates and breaks them all. Also, summertime and weekends are also visible.

Yes, Yes it is...

I don't know what you guys have been up to but I would like to share something that I have been doing in the background for a while:

https://api.craftymynes.com/bans/stats

It may not be the best coding in the world but I think it's pretty cool.

All the bans are synced between all our servers utilizing a centralized database and event driven ban collector.

This webpage processes the results and caches them for 10 minutes, it has its own api for accessing recent bans, ban stats, looking up bans (reason, person who banned, time, server, etc.) it's even able to ban and pardon players.

I soon hope to move the database to the new server and separate it from the forum, then I want to add all login and chat messages to the database, making it easy to search for lost homes and track players chat infractions.

So I ask... "What have you been up to?"

- Crafty

You have been unbanned.

Tez1010 has a base that does this, i think it is something less then 128 away but more then ~60

Also, that's what the new AI system is for, it it's able to answer basic questions about the server so that players are able to do the core things like leave spawn, sethome, and tpa

TL;DR: Nobody reads, the more reading and the more confusing things you add, the more likely to lose players.

Sadly no one reads, they don't read the book that will get them out, they through the book that will allow them to tp and then complain when they see the end screen even though in big easy to read text, it explains all this. Giving the user another book would likely be confusing for them, and even more likely they wouldn't read it. 15-25% of new players will ask why they are in the room, why they have the purple name, how they get out, how they tp, is it vanilla. All of this information is no more then one click away, the book explains it, they signs tell you why you are in there, the sidebar tells you all of the ranks.

It's a known fact that players just don't read. I have gone to many servers that tell me to read 16 page book on all the rules and then put me through a maze where I have to get all the questions correct. I either use common sense and struggle at it for about a minute, hack my way past it or just leave.

User interfaces should be simple, easy to navigate and be resilient when you mess mess up. Having an accept button on the last page would lose 25% players easy. Looking at the ratios of players in spawn vs in the new player room vs out in the wild, compared to 1.8, it's interesting.

On 1.8:

42% of players made it out of spawn.
37% of players made it out of the new player room.
21% of players never made it out of the new player room

On 1.9:

56% of players made it out of spawn.
33% of players made it out of the new player room.
11% of players never made it out of the new player room

The old new player room was difficult to navigate, was not helpful if you didn't know what you were doing and looked confusing with all the command blocks under it. The new one is straight forward, has lots of easy to read signs to help with getting out and getting started.

A 10% improvement is great but we still lose 11% of our players before they even set foot in spawn, and even worse, 33% don't even break a block. Yet still we want to add more complications to the process of getting started.

Personally I think directing the user to something like The Minecraft Wiki for info on how to craft and things like mob rates, also youtube, tell them to watch a rundown of the new 1.9 features.

- Crafty

I will leave you with this, something that happens at least once a day.

Click [Vote 1] [Vote 2] For Free Food and XP!
***1 second later***
<SomePlayer> What do I get for voting?

I think you need to be a specific distance away from the monument. Just enough for them to spawn but not enough for them to despawn. Every time this happens, I'm able to hover over it and it quickly goes back to a reasonable limit.