To preface this, my views do not represent the staff team and are purely my own:
I don't agree with the excessive nature as to how the off-topic rule is enforced. Conversations going a little off-topic is natural and is part of any regular interaction. In the earlier days of the forum, enforcement on this was pretty strict and some of us have carried on with that approach to this day.
I've seen first hand how the heavy-handed moderation has led to many users quitting and leaving over the years and I believe it is one of the key factors as to why the forum is less active today. Planet Minecraft and /r/Minecraft are all very much alive and thriving, so we can't completely attribute the decline in activity purely to Minecraft being less relevant than before.
Also to my knowledge there are some people on DSPs and the like who are right-leaning - maybe not so many in the UK.
Unfortunately there are a lot of dogmatic right leaning libertarians in the UK, it may not be as prevalent of an issue as in America but they do exist, and the same goes for not just UK but other parts of Europe including continental countries, I know USA is not in Europe, I am just bringing up the fact that the people on social media and forum platforms that spout nonsense all day acting like laissez faire economics is the answer to all our problems are not limited to the USA, but USA does get the most criticism whenever that issue gets brought up. Whether they accept it or not, if it wasn't for government funded programs a lot of scientific research wouldn't be where it is today, and if it wasn't for NASA, the Apollo mission never would've happened in the 60's.
Anyhow there is an off topic section for general discussion I am aware, I do not see the problem in discussing these things, but they certainly do not fit in the context of gaming, although they are very important sadly and sometimes you end up dealing with unfair moderation decisions because of ideology, not saying that happens here, but it is possible and if someone hates you enough they will do and say anything to cancel you and claim you said something which you did not, I know this happens because I dealt with this problem before on other platforms.
Planet Minecraft and /r/Minecraft are all very much alive and thriving, so we can't completely attribute the decline in activity purely to Minecraft being less relevant than before.
I would not call Planet Minecraft a thriving community, at least when it comes to the forums (mind that it is largely for sharing maps, resource packs, and mods); many of the sections are just as inactive as these forums (for example, Java Edition discussion, with 3 active threads in the past day. The general off-topic discussion forum is more active but discussion about the game itself is more important, and a dozen recently active threads isn't very many). The only really active Minecraft-related forums that I've come across are for major servers, such as Hypixel (the entire first page is just 10 minutes worth of activity; if you look at all activity it only goes back 1 minute; even Reddit doesn't come close to this, and actually, the way Reddit works makes high activity highly detrimental (instead of a list, with many threads per page, you only see a few posts and not many people will scroll down that far, and by default it sorts by "hot" so only highly rated/active posts are visible - consider my most recent post; either such an insane achievement is meaningless to the average person and/or they have no interest in the question, or it was quickly pushed into oblivion by new/higher-rated posts (by contrast, a picture of a chest of resources got over 10k upvotes and 700+ comments). I've seen people repost something several times in the hopes of getting lucky but that is just spam).
One thing I wanted to point out - if you are quoting a post that is more than a sentence or two (lines) you should edit out the irrelevant parts, especially if it is long and/or includes inlined (non-spoilered) images (for example), otherwise you are just cluttering up the thread with repeated content, regardless of whether it is on-topic (on the other hand I don't want you to just use the "reply" button as then there may be be no context as to who the reply is for, especially once spam has been removed, which as mentioned before breaks notifications).
I believe it's due to a combination of factors. Both, the rise of Discord and instant messaging Apps, as well as the general decline of the forum itself. I've been here over the years under many names but I know one thing - this place isn't what it used to be, and it saddens me to see it in this state. I've outlasted any friend groups I've had here over the years. I have not really had any bad interactions with staff (that I didn't deserve).
Hope we can bring back some kind of activity.
I remember years ago there was a section called PPNS (Politics, Philosophy, News and Science). Whatever happened to that?
I would not call Planet Minecraft a thriving community, at least when it comes to the forums (mind that it is largely for sharing maps, resource packs, and mods); many of the sections are just as inactive as these forums (for example, Java Edition discussion, with 3 active threads in the past day. The general off-topic discussion forum is more active but discussion about the game itself is more important, and a dozen recently active threads isn't very many). The only really active Minecraft-related forums that I've come across are for major servers, such as Hypixel (the entire first page is just 10 minutes worth of activity; if you look at all activity it only goes back 1 minute; even Reddit doesn't come close to this, and actually, the way Reddit works makes high activity highly detrimental (instead of a list, with many threads per page, you only see a few posts and not many people will scroll down that far, and by default it sorts by "hot" so only highly rated/active posts are visible - consider my most recent post; either such an insane achievement is meaningless to the average person and/or they have no interest in the question, or it was quickly pushed into oblivion by new/higher-rated posts (by contrast, a picture of a chest of resources got over 10k upvotes and 700+ comments). I've seen people repost something several times in the hopes of getting lucky but that is just spam).
Agreed that the PMC forums section is not that active when it comes to game-related discussion, however that is not an accurate barometer for activity on the site. The bulk of where game-related discussion occurs on Planet Minecraft nowadays is through wall posts or comments on submissions (maps/mods/skins etc).
Sure, there are plenty of individuals who use the wall post section to rant about their day but you do get a good amount of discussion on people sharing their skins/maps/videos, fanart, asking for feedback, tips, talking about their favorite Minecraft YouTubers and if there is a new Minecraft update coming you can bet that people will be sharing their thoughts on it.
Using myself as an example, if I posted something similar as a comment here on the update opinion thread on MCF, I would probably get 1-2 upvotes (if lucky).
If you're looking for long-form, in-depth discussion (like what you usually post here), you are admittedly not gonna find much on it on Planet Minecraft. Discussion there is mostly one or two-liners with comments like 'omg warden is cool' or memes. If there is something controversial (like the recent chat report update), then yes you do get some essay-like posts venting about it. Part of it is due to the younger demographic on PMC (it's mostly teens).
PMC has a creative focus - which is why the community is very much into discussing skins, sharing Minecraft fanart, writing stories, creating maps etc. It may not be up your alley, but all these creative outputs are Minecraft-related and hence constitute as Minecraft-related discussion.
At the end of the day, Planet Minecraft has nearly 10,000 users online (at the time of writing this post), while the Minecraft Forums has 20. I think that says it all.
I believe it's due to a combination of factors. Both, the rise of Discord and instant messaging Apps, as well as the general decline of the forum itself. I've been here over the years under many names but I know one thing - this place isn't what it used to be, and it saddens me to see it in this state. I've outlasted any friend groups I've had here over the years. I have not really had any bad interactions with staff (that I didn't deserve).
Hope we can bring back some kind of activity.
I remember years ago there was a section called PPNS (Politics, Philosophy, News and Science). Whatever happened to that?
(Hey, I remember you used to go by Thunderhoof and Starlight Glimmer on here. Those were fun times. Anyway, let me actually respond to your post now lol)
Yeah, Discord played a huge part. It was why back then we replaced the old IRC chat and launched an official Minecraft Forum discord that everyone can join via the 'chat' button on the website. While there were a lot who joined (22,000 and counting to be exact), the activity on the discord server never really materialised.
And yes, there used to be a PPNS section on the forum. I can answer your question as I was around during the time when it was removed. To summarise, PPNS resulted in a lot of heated arguments, drama, conflict and created a cesspool of negativity amongst what was otherwise a friendly community at the time. It was also deemed as an additional aspect to moderate and it can be challenging to moderate political discussion whilst being as fair and objective to everyone as possible.
Totally get the MCF admins' decision on removing PPNS though. Planet Minecraft actually allows for political discussion, so you get plenty of LGBTQ+ related posts, politics and discussion on other hot-button issues in the news. The result of this is that community can be quite toxic at times because of the difference in opinion between those who are more liberal vs those who are more conservative and it is a hassle to moderate as well.
(Hey, I remember you used to go by Thunderhoof and Starlight Glimmer on here. Those were fun times. Anyway, let me actually respond to your post now lol)
What do you remember of those times? I am genuinely curious about that. It's been years since I've been on here. While I have lurked somewhat here and there over the years, I have gained access to my other "Starlight Glimmer" account sometime ago and posted occasionally in the past few years, I was largely away from the forum - yet when I regained access for real this time, under this account, I decided to contact the staff and have this account revived. I originally had the material on this account deleted and I do not remember any of it.
My original join date, I do remember, was March 31st 2015. I was in 6th grade at the time. Now, at the time of writing this, I'm of college age. I mainly remember starting arguments and drama with people. I was just a kid at the time. Now? I'm an adult, and looking back on those events, it's another world to me. Much of it I don't remember since it's just been so long.
I don't talk to anyone from the Minecraft forums anymore on a frequent basis. Whatever roleplay groups I was in from those times have disbanded, and have been gone for years now. I haven't really seen anyone else around that I recognize, though. Seems like everyone left.
Yeah, Discord played a huge part. It was why back then we replaced the old IRC chat and launched an official Minecraft Forum discord that everyone can join via the 'chat' button on the website. While there were a lot who joined (22,000 and counting to be exact), the activity on the discord server never really materialised.
And yes, there used to be a PPNS section on the forum. I can answer your question as I was around during the time when it was removed. To summarise, PPNS resulted in a lot of heated arguments, drama, conflict and created a cesspool of negativity amongst what was otherwise a friendly community at the time. It was also deemed as an additional aspect to moderate and it can be challenging to moderate political discussion whilst being as fair and objective to everyone as possible.
Totally get the MCF admins' decision on removing PPNS though. Planet Minecraft actually allows for political discussion, so you get plenty of LGBTQ+ related posts, politics and discussion on other hot-button issues in the news. The result of this is that community can be quite toxic at times because of the difference in opinion between those who are more liberal vs those who are more conservative and it is a hassle to moderate as well.
I don't really use forums anymore that much, besides this forum and one other forum. Discord is my main go to. Discord has many issues that I do not like. It's hard to find good communities as most servers seem to be rather toxic. I want to find some sort of group with an older crowd that has a fair level of maturity, but that's fairly hard to come by over Discord.
On another forum I use, there is a political section of the forum but it is strictly moderated. Swearing, joking, emojis, and passive-aggressiveness will get you booted from it very quickly. It's a good way to filter out people.
I have been on Planet Minecraft somewhat, and I can already tell right off the bat that it's not a place I would find value in. Seems too much of a mess.
I completely forgot about this thread so this is going to come in way late: I also have brought up before the way MasterCaver posts as something that is really annoying. Literally constant mentions (it was seriously every single post I ever saw from him for what felt like months) of his mod and the fact he only played on his mod because of (topic-related reason in the thread), and what features/differences his mod had.
Combine that with huge blocks of sentences spanning 7+ lines of dense, statistic-laden jargon (almost all of it thrown into the middle of sentences just like this, sometimes multiple times in one long sentence), and even I just end up skipping almost all of his posts, and I'm someone that is much more down for debate and fleshing out ideas than an average forum poster. I don't want this to come off like I'm trying to put the guy down, this is an observation of how things went. The best conversation-killer is a guy coming in and going off on a lecture nobody asked for that spans an entire thesis on whatever subject he tackles.
As for moderation: The moderation on this site is definitely on the strict end. In the days I actively used it, I took warnings and post deletions on a roughly 1:10 warns/posts basis. I get that Minecraft is marketed towards young children, but I was having posts deleted or catching warnings for completely benign assessments of how discussions were going or how flawed a viewpoint was sometimes.
I completely forgot about this thread so this is going to come in way late: I also have brought up before the way MasterCaver posts as something that is really annoying. Literally constant mentions (it was seriously every single post I ever saw from him for what felt like months) of his mod and the fact he only played on his mod because of (topic-related reason in the thread), and what features/differences his mod had.
Combine that with huge blocks of sentences spanning 7+ lines of dense, statistic-laden jargon (almost all of it thrown into the middle of sentences just like this, sometimes multiple times in one long sentence), and even I just end up skipping almost all of his posts, and I'm someone that is much more down for debate and fleshing out ideas than an average forum poster. I don't want this to come off like I'm trying to put the guy down, this is an observation of how things went. The best conversation-killer is a guy coming in and going off on a lecture nobody asked for that spans an entire thesis on whatever subject he tackles.
As for moderation: The moderation on this site is definitely on the strict end. In the days I actively used it, I took warnings and post deletions on a roughly 1:10 warns/posts basis. I get that Minecraft is marketed towards young children, but I was having posts deleted or catching warnings for completely benign assessments of how discussions were going or how flawed a viewpoint was sometimes.
I do see where TMC is coming from sometimes though when he uses his mod as an example when he makes a critique about the current game and the way Mojang develop it. He does have some good ideas for rebalancing mob spawners which I took the time to think through before agreeing with him.
and he also makes a valid point when he says Mojang's coding practices lead to inefficiencies with how the vanilla game runs on people's computers.
I have seen several examples where modded Minecraft can be made to run better than vanilla Java, and while I don't quite understand it myself I believe it because I am aware of how bad Minecraft Java runs even on a powerful PC, it is one of the reasons me and friends went onto playing bedrock edition despite the downsides to do with mandatory updates and what not.
It is all well and good telling people to get the right specs for their gaming computers.
but no matter how high quality and performing the parts inside your PC are, if a game is not optimized it simply isn't going to work properly and people shouldn't have to be dialing back render distances to to a pathetic 8 chunks or lower just to get good performance out of this game, not in this hardware generation, even then through my testing that doesn't completely eliminate lag spikes, it just minimizes the odds of it occurring to a point but it still happens when you're generating new chunks, where as on bedrock edition most users can safely use 32 chunks render distance or more without having to sacrifice anything visually and most of the time they do not experience lag at all, this was even proven in AntVenom's testing and he has a more powerful PC than I do, he tested the game side by side on a machine with an AMD Threadripper CPU.
Something is fundamentally wrong with the game when a lot of players are having to sacrifice this much just to make the game somewhat playable for themselves and some of it clearly is to do with how Mojang codes their game, I noticed more complaints happened ever since the 1.18 update came out which made the game more demanding, in that case it was a bit more understandable, but not an excuse.
To preface this, my views do not represent the staff team and are purely my own:
I don't agree with the excessive nature as to how the off-topic rule is enforced. Conversations going a little off-topic is natural and is part of any regular interaction. In the earlier days of the forum, enforcement on this was pretty strict and some of us have carried on with that approach to this day.
I've seen first hand how the heavy-handed moderation has led to many users quitting and leaving over the years and I believe it is one of the key factors as to why the forum is less active today. Planet Minecraft and /r/Minecraft are all very much alive and thriving, so we can't completely attribute the decline in activity purely to Minecraft being less relevant than before.
Unfortunately there are a lot of dogmatic right leaning libertarians in the UK, it may not be as prevalent of an issue as in America but they do exist, and the same goes for not just UK but other parts of Europe including continental countries, I know USA is not in Europe, I am just bringing up the fact that the people on social media and forum platforms that spout nonsense all day acting like laissez faire economics is the answer to all our problems are not limited to the USA, but USA does get the most criticism whenever that issue gets brought up. Whether they accept it or not, if it wasn't for government funded programs a lot of scientific research wouldn't be where it is today, and if it wasn't for NASA, the Apollo mission never would've happened in the 60's.
Anyhow there is an off topic section for general discussion I am aware, I do not see the problem in discussing these things, but they certainly do not fit in the context of gaming, although they are very important sadly and sometimes you end up dealing with unfair moderation decisions because of ideology, not saying that happens here, but it is possible and if someone hates you enough they will do and say anything to cancel you and claim you said something which you did not, I know this happens because I dealt with this problem before on other platforms.
I would not call Planet Minecraft a thriving community, at least when it comes to the forums (mind that it is largely for sharing maps, resource packs, and mods); many of the sections are just as inactive as these forums (for example, Java Edition discussion, with 3 active threads in the past day. The general off-topic discussion forum is more active but discussion about the game itself is more important, and a dozen recently active threads isn't very many). The only really active Minecraft-related forums that I've come across are for major servers, such as Hypixel (the entire first page is just 10 minutes worth of activity; if you look at all activity it only goes back 1 minute; even Reddit doesn't come close to this, and actually, the way Reddit works makes high activity highly detrimental (instead of a list, with many threads per page, you only see a few posts and not many people will scroll down that far, and by default it sorts by "hot" so only highly rated/active posts are visible - consider my most recent post; either such an insane achievement is meaningless to the average person and/or they have no interest in the question, or it was quickly pushed into oblivion by new/higher-rated posts (by contrast, a picture of a chest of resources got over 10k upvotes and 700+ comments). I've seen people repost something several times in the hopes of getting lucky but that is just spam).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
One thing I wanted to point out - if you are quoting a post that is more than a sentence or two (lines) you should edit out the irrelevant parts, especially if it is long and/or includes inlined (non-spoilered) images (for example), otherwise you are just cluttering up the thread with repeated content, regardless of whether it is on-topic (on the other hand I don't want you to just use the "reply" button as then there may be be no context as to who the reply is for, especially once spam has been removed, which as mentioned before breaks notifications).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I believe it's due to a combination of factors. Both, the rise of Discord and instant messaging Apps, as well as the general decline of the forum itself. I've been here over the years under many names but I know one thing - this place isn't what it used to be, and it saddens me to see it in this state. I've outlasted any friend groups I've had here over the years. I have not really had any bad interactions with staff (that I didn't deserve).
Hope we can bring back some kind of activity.
I remember years ago there was a section called PPNS (Politics, Philosophy, News and Science). Whatever happened to that?
Agreed that the PMC forums section is not that active when it comes to game-related discussion, however that is not an accurate barometer for activity on the site. The bulk of where game-related discussion occurs on Planet Minecraft nowadays is through wall posts or comments on submissions (maps/mods/skins etc).
Sure, there are plenty of individuals who use the wall post section to rant about their day but you do get a good amount of discussion on people sharing their skins/maps/videos, fanart, asking for feedback, tips, talking about their favorite Minecraft YouTubers and if there is a new Minecraft update coming you can bet that people will be sharing their thoughts on it.
Using myself as an example, if I posted something similar as a comment here on the update opinion thread on MCF, I would probably get 1-2 upvotes (if lucky).
If you're looking for long-form, in-depth discussion (like what you usually post here), you are admittedly not gonna find much on it on Planet Minecraft. Discussion there is mostly one or two-liners with comments like 'omg warden is cool' or memes. If there is something controversial (like the recent chat report update), then yes you do get some essay-like posts venting about it. Part of it is due to the younger demographic on PMC (it's mostly teens).
PMC has a creative focus - which is why the community is very much into discussing skins, sharing Minecraft fanart, writing stories, creating maps etc. It may not be up your alley, but all these creative outputs are Minecraft-related and hence constitute as Minecraft-related discussion.
At the end of the day, Planet Minecraft has nearly 10,000 users online (at the time of writing this post), while the Minecraft Forums has 20. I think that says it all.
(Hey, I remember you used to go by Thunderhoof and Starlight Glimmer on here. Those were fun times. Anyway, let me actually respond to your post now lol)
Yeah, Discord played a huge part. It was why back then we replaced the old IRC chat and launched an official Minecraft Forum discord that everyone can join via the 'chat' button on the website. While there were a lot who joined (22,000 and counting to be exact), the activity on the discord server never really materialised.
And yes, there used to be a PPNS section on the forum. I can answer your question as I was around during the time when it was removed. To summarise, PPNS resulted in a lot of heated arguments, drama, conflict and created a cesspool of negativity amongst what was otherwise a friendly community at the time. It was also deemed as an additional aspect to moderate and it can be challenging to moderate political discussion whilst being as fair and objective to everyone as possible.
Totally get the MCF admins' decision on removing PPNS though. Planet Minecraft actually allows for political discussion, so you get plenty of LGBTQ+ related posts, politics and discussion on other hot-button issues in the news. The result of this is that community can be quite toxic at times because of the difference in opinion between those who are more liberal vs those who are more conservative and it is a hassle to moderate as well.
What do you remember of those times? I am genuinely curious about that. It's been years since I've been on here. While I have lurked somewhat here and there over the years, I have gained access to my other "Starlight Glimmer" account sometime ago and posted occasionally in the past few years, I was largely away from the forum - yet when I regained access for real this time, under this account, I decided to contact the staff and have this account revived. I originally had the material on this account deleted and I do not remember any of it.
My original join date, I do remember, was March 31st 2015. I was in 6th grade at the time. Now, at the time of writing this, I'm of college age. I mainly remember starting arguments and drama with people. I was just a kid at the time. Now? I'm an adult, and looking back on those events, it's another world to me. Much of it I don't remember since it's just been so long.
I don't talk to anyone from the Minecraft forums anymore on a frequent basis. Whatever roleplay groups I was in from those times have disbanded, and have been gone for years now. I haven't really seen anyone else around that I recognize, though. Seems like everyone left.
I don't really use forums anymore that much, besides this forum and one other forum. Discord is my main go to. Discord has many issues that I do not like. It's hard to find good communities as most servers seem to be rather toxic. I want to find some sort of group with an older crowd that has a fair level of maturity, but that's fairly hard to come by over Discord.
On another forum I use, there is a political section of the forum but it is strictly moderated. Swearing, joking, emojis, and passive-aggressiveness will get you booted from it very quickly. It's a good way to filter out people.
I have been on Planet Minecraft somewhat, and I can already tell right off the bat that it's not a place I would find value in. Seems too much of a mess.
I completely forgot about this thread so this is going to come in way late: I also have brought up before the way MasterCaver posts as something that is really annoying. Literally constant mentions (it was seriously every single post I ever saw from him for what felt like months) of his mod and the fact he only played on his mod because of (topic-related reason in the thread), and what features/differences his mod had.
Combine that with huge blocks of sentences spanning 7+ lines of dense, statistic-laden jargon (almost all of it thrown into the middle of sentences just like this, sometimes multiple times in one long sentence), and even I just end up skipping almost all of his posts, and I'm someone that is much more down for debate and fleshing out ideas than an average forum poster. I don't want this to come off like I'm trying to put the guy down, this is an observation of how things went. The best conversation-killer is a guy coming in and going off on a lecture nobody asked for that spans an entire thesis on whatever subject he tackles.
As for moderation: The moderation on this site is definitely on the strict end. In the days I actively used it, I took warnings and post deletions on a roughly 1:10 warns/posts basis. I get that Minecraft is marketed towards young children, but I was having posts deleted or catching warnings for completely benign assessments of how discussions were going or how flawed a viewpoint was sometimes.
I do see where TMC is coming from sometimes though when he uses his mod as an example when he makes a critique about the current game and the way Mojang develop it. He does have some good ideas for rebalancing mob spawners which I took the time to think through before agreeing with him.
and he also makes a valid point when he says Mojang's coding practices lead to inefficiencies with how the vanilla game runs on people's computers.
I have seen several examples where modded Minecraft can be made to run better than vanilla Java, and while I don't quite understand it myself I believe it because I am aware of how bad Minecraft Java runs even on a powerful PC, it is one of the reasons me and friends went onto playing bedrock edition despite the downsides to do with mandatory updates and what not.
It is all well and good telling people to get the right specs for their gaming computers.
but no matter how high quality and performing the parts inside your PC are, if a game is not optimized it simply isn't going to work properly and people shouldn't have to be dialing back render distances to to a pathetic 8 chunks or lower just to get good performance out of this game, not in this hardware generation, even then through my testing that doesn't completely eliminate lag spikes, it just minimizes the odds of it occurring to a point but it still happens when you're generating new chunks, where as on bedrock edition most users can safely use 32 chunks render distance or more without having to sacrifice anything visually and most of the time they do not experience lag at all, this was even proven in AntVenom's testing and he has a more powerful PC than I do, he tested the game side by side on a machine with an AMD Threadripper CPU.
Something is fundamentally wrong with the game when a lot of players are having to sacrifice this much just to make the game somewhat playable for themselves and some of it clearly is to do with how Mojang codes their game, I noticed more complaints happened ever since the 1.18 update came out which made the game more demanding, in that case it was a bit more understandable, but not an excuse.