Update the rules.

Author	Message
loki570023	Date sent: 2017/06/17 21:48:55 It has been a recurring issue that the Rules are to some degree, unexplained and unwritten. Ive experienced several staffing issues recently of people not knowing or understanding one of the "unwritten rules" and being frustrated at being told off for it. /warp Rulesexp doesnt explain anything and /rules is SEVERELY outdated and highly subjective. I will be writing here an updated version of ALL the rules I can think of, including the ones already at spawn. This will be very lengthy and if you dont like to read, or dont care for the subject, go ahead and click away now. 1. No griefing. Explanation: This server is a factions server, but it is peaceful. Factions is used SOLELY to claim land. No griefing and no raiding. 2. No hacking. Explanation: This includes modifying your game to give you an advantage PERIOD. No xray, no flying, no NODUS, no modding. Breaking this rule will result in a severe punishment. 3. Be nice/respectful. Explanation: This means respecting players as you would people. No racial slurs, no purposely offensive jokes or comments. You are allowed to joke around, but if someone tells you to stop, particularly a staff member, it means you are annoying players or being hurtful. Failure to stop will likely result in a mute or similar. 4. Do not be abuse Faction commands or similar. Explanation: Do not claim immediately next to someone elses build as doing so limits them and can be very annoying. This is punishable by having your land forcibly unclaimed if you do not agree to move or unclaim. Additionally, do not overclaim another faction, and do not abuse/spam things like tpa requests. 5. Do not ask for ranks other than citizen. Explanation: For donator ranks you must donate like everyone else. The only rank you may ask for is citizen, after having read the rules. {Rul could be rewritten to “The only rank you may ask for is citizen.” (after having read the rules) 6. Do not ask for free/creative mode items {I.E. spawned/illegal items} Explanation: Donators with GMC are not allowed to give you spawned items. This is against the rules and by doing so they could lose their perms or even their rank. By asking/demanding they give you illegal items, you are also breaking the rules. 7. Do not give out cheated/spawned items. {Recommend to Omit- should be put with donator rules. Could be rewritten to request that they report it if they think they have such items, to avoid any punishments.} 8. No spamming. Explanation: {pretty self explanatory, but meh.} Spamming means putting the samesentences, characters, or quickly posting in chat repeatedly, to the point of annoying other players. 9. No murderous slaughtering of players. {recommend to be rewritten to “No excessive killing of the same player.”} Explanation: If you kill someone, there is no need to keep killing them over and over, unless they continue attacking you. Killing a player over and over can spam chat and can be annoying. 10. No excessive swearing. Explanation: “Excessive” is subjective and is determined by the players/staff online at the time. IE one or two is allowed, but repeatedly swearing into chat is highly bothersome and is punishable via mute or whatever else the current staff online feel necessary. 11. Don’t advertise other servers. Explanation: Don’t put server IP’s, even fake ones, into chat. Breaking this rule WILL result in a ban. 12. Only donators can have flashy nicknames. {Recommend to omit, or to rewrite to “Only donators may have colorful nicknames.” Explanation: The /nick command is what allows you to put colors on your nickname, and because people have to donate to access it, it would be unfair to have someone change yours for free. Additionally, to many people with colorful names might spam chat. 13. Replant trees. {HIGHLY recommend to omit completely. I have never seen it enforced once in 2 years.} 14. Username changes are forbidden. Explanation: Changing your username will cause the server to view as a new player, not the same one with a new game. As a result, you lose everything, including the faction you were in, access to any locked items (chests, furnaces, etc) and your rank. 15. Repeated light toxicity results in a ban. Explanation: {further detail available on the forums} If you are a rude or “toxic” player, that the staff and community in general view as unpleasant and even unwelcome, the staff are at liberty to take a vote on whether or not you deserve to stay. If the majority vote is no, you will be banned, without warning, from the server. This INCLUDES toxic behavior taking place on the forums. The above paragraph is a rough draft of the 15 rules at spawn, rewritten to hopefully be better explained, with recommendations for rules that need to be edited/removed/added. This was from the first time I attempted to have the rules updated. The next part is a rough draft of the pvp rules, from the same document. However it is my opinion that this is somewhat poorly written and will need to be revised. {RECOMMEND THAT THERE BE A SECOND BOARD FOR THE PVP RULES, AS THEY ARE ALSO UNCLEAR.} PVP rules: 1. Do not TP kill. THis means FORCE TP. 2. TPA killing IS ALLOWED. TPA is a tp REQUEST. if you request to tp to someone, and they accept and kill you, it is legal. And if they request to tp to you and YOU accept, and they kill you, this is also legal. 3. Wilderness Killing. While not encouraged, Killing someone in the wilderness and taking their items is allowed, as is finding someone in an enemy faction and killing them. Keep in mind however that if you attack someone you cant just pvp log and turn off pvp to avoid death. and again, NO force tp kills. 4. Use PVP false! With the /pvp false, and /pvp true, you cn enable your pvp (or just /pvp). If you dont want to die, disable your pvp to prevent an issue! 5. Organized pvp. There are multiple arenas for organized pvp. If you fight someone in one of these, it is GIVEBACKS, as in returning items, unless otherwise specified. You may not keep someones items from one of these matches unless both of you agreed beforehand that you could. Now, all of that is good and well. But the larger issue at hand is, I think, the matter of the unwritten rules. The next section will be a new bit Im writing now that explains all of these "Unwritten Rules" That I can remember. New Rule 1: Harassment (Territory Invasion, etc). Staff Explanation: It falls under being ethical and respectful, with Rule 3. Why It Doesnt Work: Terms like respectful and ethical mean very different things to different people. As such what we, as staff members, want from the players within those terms should be defined clearly. Rule Explanation: If and when someone is on your land, claimed or unclaimed, whether by tp, tpa, sethome, or any other means of getting to a location, and you do not want them there, you can ask them to leave. If, after asking multiple times, the "Invader" is refusing to leave, you are perfectly within your rights to use any means necessary to remove them forcibly from your land. This INCLUDES pvp bypassing via tools such as /smite or lava buckets, and you ARE NOT responsible if they die and lose items, provided they were given fair warning beforehand. Be gracious after the act. If their items are recoverable, allow them to be recovered. If said invader continues, report with evidence to the forums or a staff member. {"Your land" Is defined as your claimed area via Factions. If it is unclaimed your land is defined by the size of the building on it, and if there are no builds nearby, they are not required to leave as it would count as wilderness. Staff have discretion in determining whether or not someone is within your unclaimed land if there is an issue. New Rule 2: Overclaim/Faction Issues. {Was stated in the second paragraph as Rule 4. Restating as it is an unwritten rule.} Staff Reasoning: The current rule 4 is dont be abusive. Overclaim could be defined as abuse of faction commands, and is therefore common sense. Why it doesnt work: "Dont be abusive" applies more to donators/staff. They are the ones with the easily abused commands like GMC, force tp, smite, etc. Your average player, however, doesnt have many abusable commands, in retrospect. /back, and faction commands are the top two. Factions is Factions:If its in wilderness, I can claim it! Rule Explanation: There should be a separate board defining acceptable faction behavior. For now Im adding it thusly- Do not abuse Faction commands or similar: Claiming directly next to someones land out of spite IS punishable. By claiming directly next to someone, especially a smaller faction, could be defined as a form of harassment and grief as it specifically limits them in that direction, as they are no longer able to expand in the direction you have claimed. The Biggest issue that comes to mind is someone joining a faction, getting angry, leaving, and then claiming their house directly next to or sometimes WITHIN the original factions territory. In short, Overclaim does not always mean directly stealing claimed land, and more commonly refers to limiting a rival faction by claiming within or around their land in an effort to spite them. If such a thing occurs accidently or unintentionally, and devolves into an unpleasant situation, it should be reported to staff so that ALL claim disputes can be resolved, hopefully peacefully and amicably for both sides. New Rule 3: PVP {EDIT: The exact pvp rules, regarding wilderness killing etc is the last unwritten rule that came to mind. However, the 4th paragraph I believe covers most of this as a separate section. Go to it for details. These were the 3 biggest "unwritten rules" Of the server that I could think of, And I believe they need to be addressed, along with the updated versions of the current rules. Obviously this is not official yet and is open to discussion. If anyone reading this has any suggestions of what I should change/add to this kindly inform me PEACEFULLY in the comments :P and please, tell me your thoughts on all this with a +1/-1, preferably with an explanation for your vote so that I know for future reference. and THANK YOU to anyone who actually read this entire thing as Im unsure as to how many will actually be willing to do so lol. -Loku
armzngunz	Date sent: 2017/06/17 21:59:17 I agree +1 There has been a few attempts in the past to change the rules and/or make them better, but it has always fallen to deaf ears, for reasons never explained. I honestly do not see any way this could be a negative change.
PumpkinPiePhD	Date sent: 2017/06/17 22:07:20 As a member, I agree completely that the rules need to be explained fully including the "unwritten" ones. This allows players to better follow them. As a former staff member, I believe that having a couple of rules that are 'loose' or 'vague' allows them to effectively do their job. I also believe that these would be too many rules and people wouldnt read them all. My suggestion is only adding one rule to the rule board that allows staff free range to punish players for any action they seem necessary. Of course, this would be limited to any punishment that the majority of the staff team agrees with. There should also be more specific rules in /warp rulesexp.
QueenColor	Date sent: 2017/06/17 22:09:02 I agree fully. +1 Lately there have been issues for my faction and myself concerning some of the unwritten rules and I feel like if they were written done and established as rules there would not be issues like the ones we've had to deal with.
Chip_Bruh	Date sent: 2017/06/17 22:26:13 I'm not in the best of moods ATM so please excuse me if I seem a bit rude. /warp RulesExp was written by Me, Armz, and Luigi. The board was implemented back on the humongous desert spawn which we had. Since then, the exact same wording of the rules has been transferred or world edited between maps / spawns. Although very limited because of signs, /warp RulesExp tells you everything you might need to know if you are unsure about the rule board. There is also a shop at the old spawn which sells Rule Explanation books, which are a bit more in depth. /rules is not out dated, it gives 4 underlying rules... Which basically say "use common sense and don't be a dick" A lot of your new rules are already covered by the existing rule board and the faction rule board, which for some poor reason has not been transfered. Pvp rules should also already be listed at a PvP arena. The exact pvp rules cannot be defined exactly because each pvp arena will have different rules dependant on who made the Arena. Our server is Friendly Factions, so it should be widely known that we don't tolerate grief/raids/player combat in wilderness. By all means, create some sub rule boards somewhere visible for new players to read, we can give them a trial run and see if it makes a difference.
Sauasgeman	Date sent: 2017/06/17 22:40:37 Even tho I break some of these, I completely agree fully. +1
luigiofthebakery Moderator	Date sent: 2017/06/18 10:32:58 There are a few reasons why those three new rules can't be clearly defined, because there is a lot of grey area between what should and shouldn't be enforced. New Rule 1: Trespassing, if that's what you mean by territory invasion, is unenforceable because land can freely be traversed by anyone, in order to get to other places, or to explore. This is why it's left up to the land owner to enforce, since it's unreasonable to expect everyone to avoid being in someone else's land even when they're offline. Therefore, the only rule that can be enforced for trespassing is general harassment (rule 3), when someone is asked to reasonably leave their land but refuses and only remains there for the purpose of harassing that person. New Rule 2: The key thing is that claiming directly next to someone's land could be defined as harassment, but in most cases it isn't, so there can't be an explicit rule against this. For example, the spawn town consists of many claims by different factions all right next to each other. You can't just complain to staff when someone claims land and builds a house right next to yours, because it's a town, and even if it wasn't, wilderness is free to claim by anyone, like you said. There can be towns anywhere. Having said that, the biggest abuse of faction claims is claiming land which is then subsequently not used, or for the sole purpose of preventing others from building there. If there should be a new rule, it should be for this. Although this is covered under rule 4. Overclaiming can sometimes also be an issue, though this depends on what is overclaimed, and is usually considered as griefing, because overclaiming land that isn't going to be used anyway should be fine. loki570023 wrote: "The Biggest issue that comes to mind is someone joining a faction, getting angry, leaving, and then claiming their house directly next to or sometimes WITHIN the original factions territory." If they had their house already in the faction's territory when they left, then I don't really see any issues with them continuing to live there, especially if they built the house themselves. New Rule 3: Like Chip said, each pvp arena should have their own pvp rules. Other than that, there are no pvp rules except for rule 9, which covers excessive killing, either of the same player, or multiple players - this also doesn't apply in pvp arenas. I don't see why there should be rules to explicity state things that are allowed, especially when they're not encouraged.
armzngunz	Date sent: 2017/06/18 17:29:04 The problem is, are new players going to read those boards with the explanations? Why would making a separate board be easier/better than adding a couple of more lines to the existing rules?
loki570023	Date sent: 2017/06/19 00:45:45 ^
luigiofthebakery Moderator	Date sent: 2017/06/19 06:45:51 If the rules look like a huge wall of text with every line on the signs used, they won't read them either. The tradeoff with more descriptive rules is that less people will read them, which is why we have a descriptive hierarchy of rules: Underlying rules (/rules) Rule board at spawn Rule explanation board at /warp rulesexp They all basically say the same thing, but with different levels of depth for edge cases.

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