A lot of posts...I am just going to answer any points in one post.
"I find the whole discussion about ways to prevent griefing stupid, "
And I find your mischaracterization of the debate citric, not to mention your condescending tone, very insulting. Can griefing ever be done away with completely, of course not, no one has suggested otherwise. The problem is right now it is far too easy to do.
"Minecraft as the game that is now requires freedom, every solution I have ever seen suggested is counter intuitive, it requires that people are limited in what they can do."
Then you haven't looked very hard. Teleport is an excellent anti-griefing tool, and is not limiting in any way. Keeping track of blocks deleted by users and allowing a reset of them upon discovery that that person is a griefer is not limiting in any way. Allowing ops to look through the eyes of any user is not limiting in any way. Tracking and reporting how many blocks are deleted and created for each user is not limiting in any way. And that's just off the top of my head, there are plenty more.
And then there is the fact that forcing a server to be private just to combat griefers is way more limiting than most of the most limiting suggestions that you so casually dismiss. Most servers are private right now, and I would guess that most of those are private to combat griefers. If you had a "/noalter username" flag that is set for all users when they come in, people could have those servers be public with no fear. How is that option more limiting than closing the server per your suggestion? You want to limit what server admins can choose to do to please your own personal Anarchy bias. If you don't want to play on a server where you are "limited to where we could place or when we could place"...then go to a server where the admin has turned those features off.
"make the game pay only."
Again, limiting. Some of the best builders haven't bought it, and would never have started it if it wasn't free. And that would be disadvantages both to the community and to Notch's bottom line at this point.
"we just need votekick and voteban"
I personally don't see that is a great solution. On any server worth its salt, if there is enough people to create a kick quorum, there is an op on there too that can do it faster and better. But it's certainly ok to have it in there, as every anti-griefing measure helps, it just isn't nearly enough.
I agree with allnatural about spawn prisons, for the most part. They do suck because people can't look around, which is what a lot of people just want to do. And maybe in looking around they will get inspired and have a great idea. That's what makes this game great, and spawn prisons squash that. With the "\noalter username" flag, you get the best of both worlds, reasonable safety from random griefers and yet they can look around.
"Why should legitimate players be restricted in their creativity by stupid rules to stop griefers when those who are upset by griefers can play elsewhere?"
WTF, that is just ass-backwards. Why should legitimate players be restricted to private servers by griefers.
"As he said it is unreasonable to expect your work to be there when you get back."
I don't find it unreasonable at all.
"If you do get upset, you've only done exactly what the greifers want, to make you mad."
That just seems silly. Talk about blaming the victim.
craftmeister is a sneaky little *******. He built some stuff on Gigantic Map and was active in the chatting for a while. Then someone apparently trusted him enough to op him, and all hell broke lose. He ipbanned a whole bunch of the best ops. Lucky he was kind of dumb and admitted that he was the one doing it and another op he had not known about banned him. The server still hasn't recovered from that.
Actually, I happened to be there when that happened. And while Caden is a nazi-loving twit, you brought it on yourself. The entire level got flooded and they were trying to clean it up with sponges. In you walk and start deleting sponges to recreate your "pool".
Now, could he have been nicer? Yeah. Should you have noticed all the water and the huge quantity of sponges everywhere and all the people running around trying to clean everything up, and not do something that was quite obviously working against what everyone else was doing? Yeah, you really should have.
Oh...and when you get kicked repeatedly, you should consider not coming back, at least for a while.
Today Rosetta was playing with his map editor, and made a level 1024 blocks high. It took like 20 seconds to fall from the top to the bottom. The capability is there already.
I have seen it happen where several come in at once. Don't underestimate the organizational power of places like 4chan.
"b) /teleport needs to be shortened to /t or /goto "
Absolutely
"c) /stop should be implemented to freeze a persons actions"
I think this, or a similar idea /noalter idea seems to be getting the most traction here.
"e) Get real, griefers will ALWAYS happen on public servers - Can't deal with it? Go private."
Perhaps, but right now it is too easy. It is a losing battle right now, and ALL of the public servers are suffering horribly. There are only a handful right now that are not a complete wasteland, and it's really only a matter of time before some stupid griefer finds the right window and destroys those too.
"f) OWNERSHIP is a system not worth implementing due to memory constraints, abuse and general annoyance"
Almost certainly true. If Notch is using a 3D array for the world, and I would assume he was, block ownership would kill performance.
"g) Don't complain that an OP isn't dealing with griefers, if you don't think their doing a good job, make your own server"
Ops can't be everywhere and on all the time. They are not omnipotent and omniscient. Even the best admined servers will get hit hard and repeatedly. They need the program to make their job easier and the griefers job harder, because right now the program gives the griefers the advantage.
"Warnings: What if they are simply deleting a piece of their building/mural?"
Good point. Maybe some kind of weighting system is in order, or time/weighting system. If you kill x blocks in the first y minutes that you are there. There are issues with that approach as well though.
"Traps: What if someone accidentaly deletes a block which is flagged?"
How often do you accidentally delete blocks, especially blocks that are part of a large project? But yes, you do have a point, it does happen. That's why a "noalter" flag would be good, because they can appeal. And I agree it isn't the best of my suggestions, but I am throwing stuff out there.
"Vote to: Mute (chat), and Kick would be handy!"
How would you tabulate it, and what are the voting rules. All people on the server? All the people currently active? All talking? Would it be simple majority? Could it be gamed by a lot of griefers coming in at the same time? It might take a while too, which would be bad. Just some thoughts.
No seriously, you really need to stop them. All of the servers look like wastelands. On the Reddit server where I hang out and am an op, every second person coming in is a griefer. I ban 10 an hour sometimes. And despite that I have created several very well liked large projects only to have them die in hours, and I doubt I will be creating any more because it just isn't worth it. Griefers are ruining the game.
Ideas:
"/noalter username" - A way to flag people to disallow them to change anything...better than banning because they can appeal or whatever, and (this is important) the ability for a server owner to set it for everyone BY DEFAULT, unless an OP changes it. That way he can leave and know all of his stuff will still be there.
Warnings - Anybody who comes in and deletes more then x number of blocks that are not ground blocks gets an auto-boot, the noalter flag set, or at least warns any admins present.
Block Protection - set certain blocks to be non-deletable
Traps - Any blocks set with a flag will, when deleted, auto ban (or auto noalter) a user. Certain works seem to be a magnet for griefers.
Any other ideas. Something must be done, and it should be made top priority. This is far more important then new block types.
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"I find the whole discussion about ways to prevent griefing stupid, "
And I find your mischaracterization of the debate citric, not to mention your condescending tone, very insulting. Can griefing ever be done away with completely, of course not, no one has suggested otherwise. The problem is right now it is far too easy to do.
"Minecraft as the game that is now requires freedom, every solution I have ever seen suggested is counter intuitive, it requires that people are limited in what they can do."
Then you haven't looked very hard. Teleport is an excellent anti-griefing tool, and is not limiting in any way. Keeping track of blocks deleted by users and allowing a reset of them upon discovery that that person is a griefer is not limiting in any way. Allowing ops to look through the eyes of any user is not limiting in any way. Tracking and reporting how many blocks are deleted and created for each user is not limiting in any way. And that's just off the top of my head, there are plenty more.
And then there is the fact that forcing a server to be private just to combat griefers is way more limiting than most of the most limiting suggestions that you so casually dismiss. Most servers are private right now, and I would guess that most of those are private to combat griefers. If you had a "/noalter username" flag that is set for all users when they come in, people could have those servers be public with no fear. How is that option more limiting than closing the server per your suggestion? You want to limit what server admins can choose to do to please your own personal Anarchy bias. If you don't want to play on a server where you are "limited to where we could place or when we could place"...then go to a server where the admin has turned those features off.
"make the game pay only."
Again, limiting. Some of the best builders haven't bought it, and would never have started it if it wasn't free. And that would be disadvantages both to the community and to Notch's bottom line at this point.
"we just need votekick and voteban"
I personally don't see that is a great solution. On any server worth its salt, if there is enough people to create a kick quorum, there is an op on there too that can do it faster and better. But it's certainly ok to have it in there, as every anti-griefing measure helps, it just isn't nearly enough.
I agree with allnatural about spawn prisons, for the most part. They do suck because people can't look around, which is what a lot of people just want to do. And maybe in looking around they will get inspired and have a great idea. That's what makes this game great, and spawn prisons squash that. With the "\noalter username" flag, you get the best of both worlds, reasonable safety from random griefers and yet they can look around.
"Why should legitimate players be restricted in their creativity by stupid rules to stop griefers when those who are upset by griefers can play elsewhere?"
WTF, that is just ass-backwards. Why should legitimate players be restricted to private servers by griefers.
"As he said it is unreasonable to expect your work to be there when you get back."
I don't find it unreasonable at all.
"If you do get upset, you've only done exactly what the greifers want, to make you mad."
That just seems silly. Talk about blaming the victim.
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Now, could he have been nicer? Yeah. Should you have noticed all the water and the huge quantity of sponges everywhere and all the people running around trying to clean everything up, and not do something that was quite obviously working against what everyone else was doing? Yeah, you really should have.
Oh...and when you get kicked repeatedly, you should consider not coming back, at least for a while.
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There was a (smaller) 9/11 tower thing on the Reddit server for a while, with plane and fire. The griefers completely left it alone.
We suspect it was a terrorist professional courtesy.
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I have seen it happen where several come in at once. Don't underestimate the organizational power of places like 4chan.
"b) /teleport needs to be shortened to /t or /goto "
Absolutely
"c) /stop should be implemented to freeze a persons actions"
I think this, or a similar idea /noalter idea seems to be getting the most traction here.
"e) Get real, griefers will ALWAYS happen on public servers - Can't deal with it? Go private."
Perhaps, but right now it is too easy. It is a losing battle right now, and ALL of the public servers are suffering horribly. There are only a handful right now that are not a complete wasteland, and it's really only a matter of time before some stupid griefer finds the right window and destroys those too.
"f) OWNERSHIP is a system not worth implementing due to memory constraints, abuse and general annoyance"
Almost certainly true. If Notch is using a 3D array for the world, and I would assume he was, block ownership would kill performance.
"g) Don't complain that an OP isn't dealing with griefers, if you don't think their doing a good job, make your own server"
Ops can't be everywhere and on all the time. They are not omnipotent and omniscient. Even the best admined servers will get hit hard and repeatedly. They need the program to make their job easier and the griefers job harder, because right now the program gives the griefers the advantage.
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Good point. Maybe some kind of weighting system is in order, or time/weighting system. If you kill x blocks in the first y minutes that you are there. There are issues with that approach as well though.
"Traps: What if someone accidentaly deletes a block which is flagged?"
How often do you accidentally delete blocks, especially blocks that are part of a large project? But yes, you do have a point, it does happen. That's why a "noalter" flag would be good, because they can appeal. And I agree it isn't the best of my suggestions, but I am throwing stuff out there.
"Vote to: Mute (chat), and Kick would be handy!"
How would you tabulate it, and what are the voting rules. All people on the server? All the people currently active? All talking? Would it be simple majority? Could it be gamed by a lot of griefers coming in at the same time? It might take a while too, which would be bad. Just some thoughts.
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Ideas:
"/noalter username" - A way to flag people to disallow them to change anything...better than banning because they can appeal or whatever, and (this is important) the ability for a server owner to set it for everyone BY DEFAULT, unless an OP changes it. That way he can leave and know all of his stuff will still be there.
Warnings - Anybody who comes in and deletes more then x number of blocks that are not ground blocks gets an auto-boot, the noalter flag set, or at least warns any admins present.
Block Protection - set certain blocks to be non-deletable
Traps - Any blocks set with a flag will, when deleted, auto ban (or auto noalter) a user. Certain works seem to be a magnet for griefers.
Any other ideas. Something must be done, and it should be made top priority. This is far more important then new block types.