Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• michellekathryn (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

With 1.7, there will be one massive change in the system: IDs will become names.That means, a stone block, now called “1”, will become “stone”. Since we are running a lot of custom stuff like the shop & deposit relying on numbers, I will have to not only change the code where numbers are used in the code, but also change all the deposits, shops etc.

For example, when you check out items from your deposit, the code checks how much space you have. That depends on which blocks can stack, and how much. So I made a table that lists all the IDs that stack less than 64 items. This will have to be changed to list the new names instead.

So to fix this, I will have to make a translation table that is readable by PHP. The first step in this is that I have an excel sheet that lists all the ID’s, new names and how high they stack.

I have created a shared Excel document where I need this to be done. I would be very happy if you guys help me there and take a look at the Block IDs and the Item IDs and transfer the DEC value to the ID field, Name (without the “minecraft:”) and how high they stack into the sheet.

Having this, I can update the code to be able to accept the new names before the release of 1.7 so that we will be as ready as possible when the new version comes out.

Thanks!

I have now changed the system so that Settlers can become Citizens after 90 days instead of 120. Why?

• We have promotions now. I think that a user can prove in 90 days if he should be Architect or not. If he/she does not, they won’t get promoted anyhow.
• We have the space
• I wanted a method to engage people earlier into the levels. Before, people would be upgraded from Settler to Architect directly from time to time. If it takes 4 months now until someone can be promoted, we need to balance that.
• This is a computer game. Things move fast. We cannot expect the majority of people to stick around for years.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• u28ds05 (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)
• rocky73 (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)
• Big__Papa (from Citizen to Architect)
• inQuish (from ArchitectDonator to DesignerDonator)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• lilroc17 (from MasterDonatorPlus to ElderDonatorPlus)
• Arielia (from Architect to Designer)
• Psychodrea (from DesignerDonatorPlus to MasterDonatorPlus)
• ShadowAgentStorm (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

[Notes:] As you can see from this post, which looks pretty much like the other 2 before, this is automated now. When I look at the voting list, I can see which ones are “done” since they have enough +/- votes, and I can then either “succeed” or “fail” them. I do this for all the proposals in the list, and the program I wrote automatically upgrades the users and posts the text you can see above to the blog.

Since this is the first Elder to be promoted, I can see how all unfinished proposals need more vote points since the vote-requirement has gone up with the number of Elders available. So everyone who was waiting for a proposal can thank lilroc17 for being set back a bit until their proposal can be closed :). However, all the votes that the upgraded users have cast previously now count more, so there is some balance in the system :)

I have now made a setup that shows you all the users you did not vote on yet when you login to the server and on the server status section of the frontpage.

Please make sure you vote on as many as possible proposals, thanks!

I am getting increasing reports about permission glitches. I am afraid I do not know where theses are coming from. I can only assume that it is caused by a bug in the permissions software. I will install a dev build and see if that fixes it. If you are submitting tickets (please continue to do so) please submit the exact time (with time in the format “-4” etc) AND a screenshot so I can track down the logfile and see if there are any clues there.

The websend plugin author now reacted to my support request and sent me an updated version of the plugin so now Enchanted books can be traded through our systems!

I have realized that we never gave additional deposit slots to designers, and now amended it. So Designers get 1 slot more now and subsequently all levels above also get one slot more. Please see the table at the end of this page for more information. Thanks kidcodiwise to point this one out.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• comeelio (from ArchitectDonator to DesignerDonator)
• underbridge (from Architect to Designer)
• kod (from ArchitectDonator to DesignerDonator)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• JoBilly (from Architect to Designer)
• sleepystrangekid (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)
• Sleeping_Owl (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)
• MakerOfWorld (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I overlooked something in the system when I fixed the databases (see post further down) which broke depositing items. This has now been fixed. Please immediately report anything else that does not seem to be working.

Currently, the voting on a user is closed once we have enough positive votes to get the required points together. However, if someone (let’s say an Elder) comes along to see a vote that he would disagree to, they cannot veto it anymore since the voting was already closed.

How would we resolve this issue? There are 2 ways:

• We do not care. First come, first serve. If nobody is around before we get the + votes in, that’s their problem, even if a vote is closed after 1 hour already because it got enough + votes.
• We make a minimum time a vote has to be open before it can be closed. That could be a week, a month or whatever else we think is reasonable.

I would prefer the second method, with a standard wait of 7 dates from the proposal. Opinions?

Here are some more news:

• baronmanfred was upgraded to Architect (congratz!)
• ueddy was upgraded to Architect (congratz!)
• I have reviewed larger portions of the code. There was an inconsistency in how the code would switch between databases and if some actions were done in one database and then in another, the code would sometimes not switch properly and then fail to find the correct tables. I now went through every single database query in the code and changed the process of database selection everywhere to avoid this issue. This should reduce the amount of random errors and result in an overall more stable system.

So here is the next round of upgrades:

• Estebanismo (to Architect)
• Rickard2012 (to Architect)
• pagreiferto (to Designer)

Here some additional points:

• when someone reaches negative points equal to the positive value needed to get promoted, the vote will count as “failed” and the user will be blocked for 2 months before they can be proposed again.
• there is currently no way to withdraw a proposal. I am a bit reluctant to do that (it’s work, ya know), I think it’s just as easy for a proposed who thinks they made a mistake to simply alter their proposal vote from “support” to “veto”. Opinions?
• [Update] If a vote is not closed after 2 months, it will be counted as “failed” and the user cannot be proposed for another 2 months.

So the first upgrades from the new voting system are in:

• Akium (to Architect)
• iamjonno23 (to Designer)
• chrispypancake (to Designer)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

So I finalized the software except 3 points:

• it does not consider vetos from elders any different than others. It’s only a point-issue. I want to enable something but am not clear yet on he method.
• Karma is not yet displayed anywhere. You can however click on the usernames and see the karma on the user’s own page.
• the promotions are not automated. The system automatically closes votes when the required points are reached, but the promotion itself is not done (yet). I want to run the system for a while a keep that manual to see the dynamics of vetoed entries etc.

I have built it so that I can see all votes and their weight on the proposals. Every proposal will be hand-checked by myself (I will do that once a day or so for now). Later, once I can confirm that we are happy with the system, we can automate it. So you guys can go ahead and submit real proposals, as well as cast real votes.

I have setup a voting test page already, all I need to do is expiring votes and the actual promotion once someone hits the proper vote number. Please do me the favor and cast some test votes. If someone finds something that is inconsistent with the rules described in the last post, please tell me!

From the feedback (thanks, guys!) I conclude that this would be a good idea, at least to try. So let me outline here what this can ultimately look like. We would implement it in stages, starting from the top levels, but eventually work our way levels down:

General Rules:

• Any and all asking for promotions or karma is off-limits. Repeated offending will be banned.
• Settlers and Citizens will stick with giving/receiving karma. We display the karma in the voting process to simply give additional information on the proposed people. Specially if people are very controversial (+10 & -10), this should be a sign that someone maybe isn’t Master material.
• All levels (except Settler and Citizen) can vote to promote by one rank if the proposed person has a lower rank.
• All votes are secret. Nobody can see how many votes someone got, and you can see only who is proposed if you can actually vote on them.
• Higher level votes count double. If a Architect votes on a citizen, it’s +1 vote. A Designer can give +2 votes, the next level +4, then +8 and so on.
• If someone has been upgraded, they have to wait at least 2 months before they can be proposed again. Someone has to be Citizen before being recommended.
• A negative vote will be subtracted from the points.
• Votes cast expire after 2 months to make sure people do not linger in the proposal system for 6 months.
• To recommend someone, you need to be 2 levels above the proposed person (or Elder).

When will someone be upgraded?

I made the following spreadsheet:
So there are 11 active Elders, 11 Masters and so on (Column A/B). If we assume that Architects have a voting power of 1, and we double at every step, Elders will have 8 (column C). Assuming all users of a level vote for someone, their per-level voting power per level is 88 for Elders, 32 for Architects (Column D) etc. Since everyone in the table can vote for an Citizen to be upgraded, the accumulated voting power for that level is 88+44+14+32=178 (Column E), for an Architects to become Designer it’s the same but less the Architect votes (88+44+14=146) and so on (column E). Then we assume that all Elders votes together should always be enough to promote someone, so the max vote required is 88, (100% of Elders) and then less than that when we go lower (Column F). So we could vote a Citizen to Architect with 26 Architects (Field G5) or with 4 Elders or 7 Masters or 13 Designers. Or any combination of those. This method puts the main power in the most regular users and makes sure that we need more users with each level we go down, but Elders can always rule the game. It will be hard to get 26 Architects to vote for something. To have 4 Elders in one vote will be easy enough however. They are online a lot and talk to each other anyhow. It also makes it quite hard for someone to come in with friends and affects the voting process since there would be quite some people required.

Rejected method:

There are two possible base methods: The one above where we assume that the combined power of all Elders should be enough for anything, or one where we want a certain % of all possible voters to be counted. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. I tried around a bit and chose the first one. If, alternatively we used the same vote power (1,2,4 & 8) and left the % progression the same, but made the % depending on the overall available voting power, we would get this:

I found this unreasonable since even all Elders would not be able to promote someone to Master. Of course one can compensate with higher voting powers for Elders, but then we just get back to simulate the first model.

We might change this in the future if we find out that there are not enough people being able to accumulate enough votes, but for now I want to keep this.