This discussion reminds me of a blog I followed for a long time. The owner had something he called "The Living Room Rule." This rule was, "if you wouldn't say it or it wouldn't be OK with everyone there if you said it in my living room, you can please leave now." He didn't mean statements with which he disagreed substantively, not at all, there were vigorous discussions there, he meant rudeness, insulting language, and "attitude" in its many forms. Most people were more than welcome in his large and genial living room, as they are at DigStraightDown. But not everybody. "Respectful and pleasant" are a good formulation.
The Living Room Rule is the foundation of all civilized commerce on the internet. (And elsewhere too, for that matter.) Sites which diverge from this view or which don't enforce it descend immediately into chaos.
The hardware is in New England, that is, on the east coast of the North American continent. We are easy to reach from California (where I am) to Poland (where we have a couple of players). That's a big area. So besides the Americans, who are probably a plurality though not a majority, we have a number of Canadians (some of our best players) and at least two in Mexico. In addition are the many Europeans. Because this is an English speaking server we are limited to people who can read signs and emails and chat in that language. English, however, is widely spoken in Europe. We have many players in Great Britain of course (Scots, English, Irish) and many in northern Europe, such as the Netherlands (where English is taught in the schools) and especially in Norway. One of our most prolific builders is in Norway. We have players in other European countries as well, such as Finland and Poland. (One of our players in Finland is not fluent in English but he's a good builder and he gets by.)
After all, Minecraft is a European game.
We even have one player in Singapore, and to my surprise he reports a good ping. That really is on the other side of the planet from the hardware!
I find this mix of nationalities stimulating and fun. We have a lot of interesting discussions on many topics.
We're not rigid about the mcbans thing. Local bans, especially, which cannot be appealed, can sometimes be explained away. Even a global ban might have a persuasive explanation. But some guy who has 8 global bans for griefing on 8 different servers? They were all against him and we should feel sorry for him? Mcbans is corrupt so we should disregard this? Come on. Usually, not always, usually, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Mcbans is not perfect, but it is what we have.
Your image of you banging your head on the wall is making MY head hurt. You should consider being nicer to yourself.
LycaonX, you didn't read the /motd. It says that you can look around, but you cannot build until you are authorized by a mod. In the meantime you cannot play the game. This is how we control access to the server, and it is a substitute for a whitelist which would not allow you to log on at all. If you were interested in joining you should have emailed me, as instructed in the /motd.
If you feel that this is "control" you are correct. We do control access. You must be an adult, you must not be a known griefer, and you must email me, to play at Digstraightdown. That's all. Largely because we do have these (minimal) controls, we have almost no grief or bad behavior on this server.
You are very welcome to come back and go through our process. On the other hand, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of minecraft servers on the internet. I am sure you can find one with uncontrolled access. Best wishes.
I want to address the donation question, and the financing of these servers in general.
We used to be hosted on the owner's personal computer, but this became impractical as we got bigger. Now we're commercially hosted.
Commercial hosting is not free. ("Free" hosting is worth just about what you pay for it.) The cost depends on the size of the server, on the host, and on various other factors. Digstraightdown is a 30 slot server with a lot of add-ons (such as logblock). You can research the costs of running such a server yourself if you wish. It is not huge, under $60 a month, but it is not negligible when you consider that the charges add up month by month, every month. Larger servers are even more expensive to run. All this of course assumes that the owner and the admins work for free (which is certainly the case at Digstraightdown). (!)
Different servers handle this differently. Some wealthy owners just pay for it themselves. One that I know of is hosted (whether with the employer's knowledge or not, I do not know) on the computers of the owner's employer. (This owner is a professional IT.) This free solution is not available to most people. Some servers charge admission, usually a monthly charge, as WoW does. Many "sell" in-game privileges, such as flying, or access to creative mode, to a special class of players, often called "Donators" or something like that.
WE DO NOT AND NEVER WILL CHARGE ANY FEES. You are perfectly welcome to play at Digstraightdown forever, for nothing. NO IN-GAME ADVANTAGES, INCLUDING SPECIAL TITLES, FLYING, ANYTHING ELSE, ARE FOR SALE. AND NO OTHER PLAYERS WILL EVER KNOW WHETHER YOU DONATED OR NOT. You can support the server single-handed for years and you will get nothing for it. No one will know, and if you grief you will be immediately ejected.
Nevertheless our owner is not wealthy, and money does not grow on trees. We accept donations from established players, and we are all grateful for them. Many people do not have the money, and that is perfectly OK too. Nothing is ever required. You can donate eventually, but only if you want to.
HelloKitty behaved badly on the server. It was the kind of behavior, aimed at making other players miserable, which we are dedicated to preventing. Whether or not she has dyslexia is irrelevant. Of course, we don't know and don't much care whether she does or not.
I am hoping that she finds a place to play where she fits in better.
We ask for an email so that we can communicate with the players. We send out maybe one mass email every couple of months. These are all about things you need to know. For example, twice in our relatively long life commercial hosts have flaked out on us - we have a good one now but one never knows - and we need a way to get in touch if that should happen again.
If you're touchy about privacy, get a gmail account. Honestly. People act like they never heard of gmail.
BUT PLEASE GIVE US AN ADDRESS YOU CHECK REGULARLY. Otherwise you will miss out on important information.
We don't sell email addresses or send spam or something. Come on.
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I can also testify that I'm struggling with the technical details of popping up a screen shot here. I shall, however, prevail!!
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This discussion reminds me of a blog I followed for a long time. The owner had something he called "The Living Room Rule." This rule was, "if you wouldn't say it or it wouldn't be OK with everyone there if you said it in my living room, you can please leave now." He didn't mean statements with which he disagreed substantively, not at all, there were vigorous discussions there, he meant rudeness, insulting language, and "attitude" in its many forms. Most people were more than welcome in his large and genial living room, as they are at DigStraightDown. But not everybody. "Respectful and pleasant" are a good formulation.
The Living Room Rule is the foundation of all civilized commerce on the internet. (And elsewhere too, for that matter.) Sites which diverge from this view or which don't enforce it descend immediately into chaos.
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The hardware is in New England, that is, on the east coast of the North American continent. We are easy to reach from California (where I am) to Poland (where we have a couple of players). That's a big area. So besides the Americans, who are probably a plurality though not a majority, we have a number of Canadians (some of our best players) and at least two in Mexico. In addition are the many Europeans. Because this is an English speaking server we are limited to people who can read signs and emails and chat in that language. English, however, is widely spoken in Europe. We have many players in Great Britain of course (Scots, English, Irish) and many in northern Europe, such as the Netherlands (where English is taught in the schools) and especially in Norway. One of our most prolific builders is in Norway. We have players in other European countries as well, such as Finland and Poland. (One of our players in Finland is not fluent in English but he's a good builder and he gets by.)
After all, Minecraft is a European game.
We even have one player in Singapore, and to my surprise he reports a good ping. That really is on the other side of the planet from the hardware!
I find this mix of nationalities stimulating and fun. We have a lot of interesting discussions on many topics.
0
We're not rigid about the mcbans thing. Local bans, especially, which cannot be appealed, can sometimes be explained away. Even a global ban might have a persuasive explanation. But some guy who has 8 global bans for griefing on 8 different servers? They were all against him and we should feel sorry for him? Mcbans is corrupt so we should disregard this? Come on. Usually, not always, usually, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Mcbans is not perfect, but it is what we have.
Your image of you banging your head on the wall is making MY head hurt.
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(More Canadians!!)
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If you feel that this is "control" you are correct. We do control access. You must be an adult, you must not be a known griefer, and you must email me, to play at Digstraightdown. That's all. Largely because we do have these (minimal) controls, we have almost no grief or bad behavior on this server.
You are very welcome to come back and go through our process. On the other hand, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of minecraft servers on the internet. I am sure you can find one with uncontrolled access. Best wishes.
0
We used to be hosted on the owner's personal computer, but this became impractical as we got bigger. Now we're commercially hosted.
Commercial hosting is not free. ("Free" hosting is worth just about what you pay for it.) The cost depends on the size of the server, on the host, and on various other factors. Digstraightdown is a 30 slot server with a lot of add-ons (such as logblock). You can research the costs of running such a server yourself if you wish. It is not huge, under $60 a month, but it is not negligible when you consider that the charges add up month by month, every month. Larger servers are even more expensive to run. All this of course assumes that the owner and the admins work for free (which is certainly the case at Digstraightdown). (!)
Different servers handle this differently. Some wealthy owners just pay for it themselves. One that I know of is hosted (whether with the employer's knowledge or not, I do not know) on the computers of the owner's employer. (This owner is a professional IT.) This free solution is not available to most people. Some servers charge admission, usually a monthly charge, as WoW does. Many "sell" in-game privileges, such as flying, or access to creative mode, to a special class of players, often called "Donators" or something like that.
WE DO NOT AND NEVER WILL CHARGE ANY FEES. You are perfectly welcome to play at Digstraightdown forever, for nothing. NO IN-GAME ADVANTAGES, INCLUDING SPECIAL TITLES, FLYING, ANYTHING ELSE, ARE FOR SALE. AND NO OTHER PLAYERS WILL EVER KNOW WHETHER YOU DONATED OR NOT. You can support the server single-handed for years and you will get nothing for it. No one will know, and if you grief you will be immediately ejected.
Nevertheless our owner is not wealthy, and money does not grow on trees. We accept donations from established players, and we are all grateful for them. Many people do not have the money, and that is perfectly OK too. Nothing is ever required. You can donate eventually, but only if you want to.
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I am hoping that she finds a place to play where she fits in better.
0
We ask for an email so that we can communicate with the players. We send out maybe one mass email every couple of months. These are all about things you need to know. For example, twice in our relatively long life commercial hosts have flaked out on us - we have a good one now but one never knows - and we need a way to get in touch if that should happen again.
If you're touchy about privacy, get a gmail account. Honestly. People act like they never heard of gmail.
BUT PLEASE GIVE US AN ADDRESS YOU CHECK REGULARLY. Otherwise you will miss out on important information.
We don't sell email addresses or send spam or something. Come on.