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.

The link here on the right side for http://minecraftservers.com has been fixed. Please test and tell me if the vote registers.

You can now again deposit and withdraw enchanted items!

I have not been online a lot recently, since I have been traveling too much for business. I was only 1 week at home every month since June and therefore had very little time for games and the server. This week I am again on the road, but from next month week it should calm down a little and I will have more time to spend on the server.

I am currently in discussions with the developer of the websend plugin that is driving 90% of our in-game functions such as the shop, the contest system and many more. He sent me a new beta-version that should fix a lot of things such as enchanted items in the shop. Since the last beta he sent me did not work, I hope this version will. Unfortunately, I am spending a lot of time in cars right now and this is not the right environment to test new plugin beta versions without the risk to leave the server crippled for several hours in case something does not work.

So please be patient, I hope to have the latest version tested in the coming 24-48 hours. I hope I will also be soon able to close the contest and move it to the city.

I am also looking forward to 1.7. I will most likely do the following due to all the new biomes:

• Reset ALL empty lots in the empire.
• If I can manage it, allow everyone a one-off reset of their empire lot(s) within the first months after the new version goes live.
• Not sure if I reset the nether, so far I do not know if something changes there
• not reset the kingdom/aether/flatlands lots or change these maps in any way
• darklands will of course reset, too
• I am not decided yet if we will have a temp server. From the learnings we had at the last upgrade, and the ease to downgrade with the new launcher, I most likely will not do so.

So I discovered that it was possible to drop items through the ender portal. The portal being in a creative world, this is quite an issue since it means diamond armor for free.

I now removed the “vanilla” ender portal and replaced it with another one that does not allow to drop items through. No need to say that any proof of people exploiting this stuff will get them immediately banned.

I discovered today that there is a loophole: When people get muted, the server checks if the user account exists or not. It did so by looking for a website account. If the user however deleted their website account, this check failed, and the user could not be muted.

So what I did first was to make a fallback that looks for the userfile on the minecraft server in addition in case the website account does not exist. On top of that, I now added a process that removes people from the whitelist and boots them off the server as soon as they delete their account on the website. Thanks to Albertpuding helping me testing!

While we did not have this issue before, I think it’s an good process to have people removed from the server as soon as we do not have an email address on file for them anymore. It keeps the accountability for them up, at least a little :) and also stronger links what happens on the website with what happens on the server.