So I understand there is intense controversy in what I am humbly asking you all to help me with but nonetheless I'm going to ask anyway.
I ask for as many of you as possible to make as much effort as you can to help make this server a welcoming and engaging place for the new ones joining, although doing this for all of the occasionally active players helps.
Talk to new players. Although I mostly see ops doing this, don't introduce them with "you'll get banned if you grief" if possible. Obviously reading the rules and helping them follow the rules is important but what's more important is that the player has fun and doesn't feel like they've stepped foot into a boot camp.
We also have some features to help introduce them to. I'd rather this not get into a discussion about the lack of features - we just need to work with what we've got. This server is very comparable to creative servers, whether we like it or not. And we have a fair amount of features and shit that normal creative folks might enjoy. The main one being the immediate access to commands such as worldedit (building with the player is an option too), /nick and /tag -s set is something we take for granted here. But many servers have /nick as a rather high ranking donor perk, as well as /disguise. Then you've got /itemizer, the ability to make their own custom items with enchantments and lore as they desire. If they're a PvP type or enjoyed the item making they have /warp kits, a repository of kits made by the best creators on ( and off ) the server for all kinds of purposes although as I recall it's mainly oppvp.
Sure this stuff may be small but doing one or two of these things might help with keeping the player around, although it's not as important to me as this second point.
Engagement.
Talk to them. Make small talk - how is their day going? Where are they from? What's school like for them? Etc etc. Try to ask open ended questions that allow them to talk for a bit to someone whose listening. We also have a variety of dumb and simple inside jokes - involve the player in those. Tell them to call me an egirl or whatever or allude to one of the other bits of stupid humour we have around here. Again, it's small, but things like including people in the regular jokes and banter make them feel valued and again add to a sense of being welcomed.
Also I'm not entirely as sure on this one, but we as staff members have a bit of influence. A bit more of an impact. Although I don't entirely like to admit it, we are generally more popular for being staff members here. If you join a server as a new player and one of the admins takes time to build and play with you, that's going to leave a nice positive impact. Everyone wants to be mates with the more popular people too. I fangirled over Minecraft staff members on servers I played on myself when I was younger. I don't know why I did it and I'm rather embarrassed to be saying that here but my point is that I am surely not alone in that. Generally players will want to talk to us more.
I don't know where I'm going with this at this point but I hope I've got something across. Going to leave y'all with a song lyric which kind of sums up what I'm feeling about this whole thing. I care about this place a lot. Maybe too much.
In a world that has decided that it's going to lose its mind, be more kind, my friends. Try to be more kind
