Can I vouch here? If I can, I do - Decy was one of the best admins of all time on TF, and has had to deal with an immense amount of server drama and/or bullshit.
If I'm being honest, saying that a vote is required on something that has always been an automatic approval (given the requirements are met) is something that Robin or Ivan would have done.
I would like to counter that by saying that video allink and I are all currently actively contributing to our new project.
On paper, it's a great plan if you guys can manage to get it done, but I'll believe it when I see it. I have respect for what the devs here are doing but I still don't think anyone is going to make it over the million zillion hurdles you need to get a custom plugin that is solid enough to serve a tech-savvy community with picky and stubborn upper management. TF has been waiting on a new custom plugin for years and the fact that it still hasn't been implemented makes me believe it just isn't a viable plan.
Dude as an exec you were the problem I mentioned in the server-management section. You refused to do your job, you sat and just bitched about literally everything, and you refused to listen when legit like nobody else wanted your idea and still tried to press it as if it’d change anything
Since you're now bringing this up, I actually started to suggest the anarchy idea after everything else I wanted done with freedom was turned down by Ryan or someone else. Anyone else who was there knows it'd be a lie to say anarchy was the only potential solution I suggested - I brought up many different things that could be done to make the server more interesting. I talked with Steven about bringing a cracked system back that could host both premium and cracked players. I suggested we switch to standard permissions. I offered to do the work on that myself if it was needed, because I was someone who had the motivation to actually do it (at the time.) I suggested we experiment with datapacks and new gamemode ideas. The number one point I actually brought up with the executives then were that my hands were tied, and something needed to be done about the game server before I could begin marketing - I literally couldn't do the rest of my job properly with the lifeless state of the freedom server. Nobody can.
At a certain point the response to every single one of those changes I suggested was that it "wasn't my job," and that by making those points I "wasn't doing my job," but that is a completely nonsensical argument. For as much as everyone here hated the lack of actual action from me, that same lack of action has honestly been present ever since I left. People don't complain about it as much because it's under the guise of someone whose job is to pretend community events and small changes and steps taken to market a server that is currently a dysfunctional creative freebuild are actually going to cause any significant growth. The server is still just as dead as it was the entire time I was there.
The reason I literally did nothing but suggest these changes is because I knew nothing was going to get done anyway unless changes were made to the in-game experience. And honestly, everything that has happened since I left has proven that point. Tizz has honestly made just as much progress as I had as marketing manager, but that's something nobody here wants to talk about because I was up front and took the shit for getting nothing done while he has just accepted that his hands are tied and taken steps to obscure the fact that nothing is still getting done. In this thread everyone is complaining about how the server is still sluggish and boring, and that nobody has any motivation to do anything.
I am done talking about anarchy, and I am done suggesting any more changes. I am done trying to give you guys ideas. I am done trying to help. I am a fool for believing that at some point people would listen.
After being here for approaching 11 years as an admin now, it's hard to disagree with any of your points really.
Being 100% honest, it's really hard to motivate myself to work on TF stuff now, after the last couple of years of fairly consistent death threats, doxing and general issues it causes my life it's hard to keep loving the place especially when I've been working on building other communities which are significantly more friendly and grateful for the amount of time, effort and money that goes into running things like this.
A conclusion like this should mean one of two things happens:
One - drastic changes are made in an attempt to repair the broken state of the server and its community. Maybe I shouldn't say "drastic" because they're actually reasonable changes that a few people, or sometimes just I have been suggesting we do for ages. Switching to standardized permissions (WITHOUT any long winded attempt at a custom plugin,) trying out anarchy, banning slurs, and handling punishments in a mature and private manner are not hard things to do in the slightest. I'm not kidding when I say all this could be implemented in a week or two if people planned it out and accepted and agreed it needed to happen. And yes, that is with the development team we currently have. I know it's possible because Lakefield and I did a lot of the same things with a much smaller, but more focused staff team.
But, if people can't agree once again, and if what was said here is responded to the same way it was before, it's going to be time for option two:
I'm open to options to turn things around, but I'll be 100% honest, given how much TF costs and how generally ungrateful people have been for the place existing, if the mood / vibe / general impression people get joining TF / our Discord / forums doesn't improve over the coming months, I'll start to re-consider shit-canning this once and for all.
If things haven't changed in a few months I will come back here and repeat what you said here. Something needs to be done about this, whether it's a revival or burying the dead corpse.
Now, here we are. We've been given yet another opportunity to right our wrongs. Will we finally take this opportunity? It's up to us. I've been a witness to the various shitshows certain members causes both inside and outside of the community over the years. This is a dangerous trend, and it's literally killing us. As a community, we must break this trend and realize that being intolerant pricks, even if you believe you are doing the right thing, is a godawful idea.
It's all about shaping the network in the ways you want people to behave. A lot of the problems mentioned have solutions that, despite being not very challenging to implement, are things that absolutely nobody wants to do. At this point I don't and can't understand why none of it has been done yet. But if now is the time where it finally does happen, then yeah, maybe we have a chance to knock this server and its community off its current path to its grave.
I think for the past few years I have been known here as "guy who complains." Are we ready to listen? I doubt it, but here we go again, another two-parter.
I remember a time where I was optimistic about TotalFreedom and what was going to happen here. The thing that ended up changing that was when I got the chance to run a server of my own with a management team that was ready for something new. I have seen how well things can run if people are actually willing to try things out and experiment with different options. A few of the things said in this thread happen because they're symptoms of being stubborn and unmotivated, but there are solutions to these things that I have frankly been talking about for ages. I'm going to go over some of people's points and ideas.
This works fine when there's at least 2 active developers, but due to the nature of the developer role on TF, being without an activity requirement, and the terrible build times of TFM and just massive codebase issues, there is often only one active developer who wants to actively improve the codebase of TFM, without anyone to merge these PRs. When your PR is merged into the development, it often takes months for it to be published as a release, or put on the server.
Of course, that's now all basically irrelevant now that Paldiu has started the development of FNS, however I hope that the "it sort of works, so why change it?" attitude will never be repeated to such a degree with the warning of my lengthy paragraph above. Let's hope FNS is finished quite soon, so we can finally kick TFM into the bowels of hell, and let it burn there for all eternity.
Everyone knows now that it's long past time we got over TFM and moved on to something else. The part that nobody realizes yet though is that TF really doesn't have enough motivated developers to get a full, custom plugin done the way TF wants it to be done. Lakefield and I ran into this same problem when we were working on our server. Do you know who our lead developer was? It was the same person who is the lead developer for TF right now. Lakefield pitched the idea that we never needed a custom plugin in the first place and we should just move on to a fully permission based system running with LuckPerms, and that was honestly the best decision we made when it came to moving along server setup. We ended up making a solid permission-based system that worked for many different gamemodes, including creative, survival, skyblock, and the lobby system. LuckPerms is incredibly flexible, and also, very importantly, doesn't require a full-on developer to be worked on. Once the base setup is done, it's possible to manage everything from an easy to use online web panel.
TF could honestly handle many of its development related issues if they just made the same switch we did, but I have pitched that idea before, and every time, one stubborn individual or another says it will "never happen" for reasons like "We already are using NetworkManager" (which honestly most people here agree is dogshit) or "We don't want to sacrifice full op...," a baseless idea that was literally already given up on by the current devs who at least knew better than to attempt to maintain it.
Just accept that it's time to move on to a more standardized permissions system. I know that the people here can do it because the much smaller team working on UMC/Darkstone got it done in far, far less time than it is still taking for TF developers to come out with whatever custom project they're trying to complete. It is not an issue of "we can't do it" or "it's impossible" or "it won't work." It can be done. Easily. If the community and administration here still can't make the choice to do it, it's honestly on them.
And if that wasn't enough, here's another hard to swallow pill for you guys: Your current lead developer chose to use the permission system that was set up by mostly Lakefield over anything that was done here when working on the new attempt at a UMC reboot. You know why that is? It's because it works way better and was made by people who were more focused on the idea of running a stable and enjoyable experience.
This entire server smells heavily of slow stagnation. The current stagnant status of TF will eventually lead to its downfall, whether you believe it or not. The server bills are paid, sure, but there aren't any features actually being added, besides the occasional bug or exploit fix. The server never changes. For some people, that's probably fine, but I enjoy change in my servers. If you eat the same food, made by the same cook, every day, for every meal, then eventually you'll get sick of that food.
I have said this exact same thing a million zillion times and the response I get nearly every single time is some form of "We're ok with this! We don't want it to change." How can people be ok with this? You're right, if the server continues on the same path it's going now, it's going to die some way or another.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because I’ve found nowadays it’s incredibly difficult to do my job. No matter how many times I can repeat “take deep topics to private areas” or “don’t tell people to kill themselves” or “don’t burn pride flags” or even “Stop talking about explicit sexual shit in public”, it will fall on deaf ears. If I then do something to stop it happening, i.e. ban, mute, etc I will get screamed at and made fun of, and I’m sure the rest of the team can relate here
The issue with trying to cleanse the TF community of these behaviors is that beforehand, TF had fostered the same behavior for years, and they still continue to do so for some things. Telling people to kill themselves and burning pride flags and talking about sexual things were essentially seen as basic, day-to-day non-issues for the longest time. It's going to be extremely hard to reverse that type of behavior within this community, but it's definitely being made harder by some of the ways in which this community currently functions. There's a good reason why most reasonable communities don't allow people to say "retarded" and treat the word as what it is, a slur.
And no, this isn’t normal. Any other community would be receptive of the rules that have been in place for years, but on TF if I try to do my job I get screamed at by the community and if I try to do what I’ve done for the past few months now and try to be relaxed but firm I get screamed at by somebody who doesn’t like the fact that I’m being relaxed
At base value it’s just disappointing. I do want to be relaxed and I do want to give people as much freedom as they can but it’s incredibly difficult when people just constantly whine and take advantage of the fact that I’m doing that.
You have been here long enough to know that this is never going to change. It's behavior that has been affirmed and cemented by TF's community over the majority of its long history. That's another good reason why I keep pitching the idea that we try out anarchy over and over and over again. It's the only type of server that you could reasonably expect a community like this to exist within.
An example I can give about this is when I was an event host. I was busy with my own life, but when I did host events people just found ways to exploit it, making me look like a fool.
and god forbid that you ban someone for doing something incredibly stupid, suddenly 50 TF lawyers appear and protest with some pedantic technicality.
Another example of the behavior that makes me keep saying that TF would work as anarchy over and over. Nobody can do this if there are no rules. If TF is going to continue to have this type of behavior as a community, it should accept that it's a place for people to say pedantic things and give anarchy a try.
This community is quite frankly very toxic and no matter what you do, you're examined under an electron microscope for every move. For example, I ban someone and there's a chance people will riot and somehow try to invalite decision despite the legitimacy of the ban or the fact evidence exists to support it.
A good solution to this is honestly to just make punishments and bans private. The way literally every other server functions is that bans appear as someone just leaving the server with absolutely no message or anything, and that ban appeals are private and handled by staff only. I still don't know why TF hasn't made this change yet. The people arguing for transparency as a reason to keep the current system are the same people who throw temper tantrums every time someone gets banned for a valid reason.
Nobody should honestly expect people to treat staff-issued punishments in anything other than a completely pedantic way given that, honestly, the same punishments are issued in a pedantic way too. There's still "naughty, naughty boy" messages that pop up whenever people get banned, people who get banned end up being the ass end of jokes for way too long because the staff here literally have nothing better to talk about, and punishments are still handled and appealed in a manner that is literally just a TF spectacle and tradition at this point. It attracts people who seek out and cause real drama over pointless issues, and not the other type of useful "drama" people here still confuse it with that is just the constructive criticism that occurs when actual issues are addressed and changes are suggested.
It's time to accept that Discord has successfully isolated their core user base (gamers) by repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with these updates. They have been trying to escape the taboo of being the "gamer" platform for quite some time now. I don't know why they're still doing this, honestly... if they just embraced the "by gamers, for gamers" attitude they had before they'd be in a much better place right now. As a company, they're now in an awkward position where they have isolated their core audience and also failed to become acceptable in a mainstream context. Think of what happens when you mention Discord to your friends in real life - nobody wants to use it because they want to avoid the "discord mod" stigma. There are changes to the platform that should have been made to get rid of that stigma, but the changes that have actually happened have been in all the wrong places.
Bro was spitting straight facts on the forum and then had to ruin it all with the april fools part
Oh. So we're finally ready to have THIS discussion...If only someone had brought this up years ago so we could fix the inconsistency...oh, wait a second! https://totalfreedom.boards.net/thread/64640/images
My opinion on this can be summarized by my words from 2019, which still hold true today:
Honestly at this point if the staff here are going to keep up this behavior I'd recommend making this an 18+ community. I don't have much more to say than the fact that it's kinda sad to see this community repeatedly break their own rules.
Some words from Polaris Seltzeris are also worth reading:
The conduct policy should be followed consistently. I think it's unacceptable that admins can get away with literal violations of the rules, where if a regular member does it they could be reprimanded accordingly regardless of how 'rare' it is.
Today it's a bit murkier than just admins and ops like it used to be, but the rules surrounding NSFW are still being enforced with incredible inconsistency. It's time to lay down a consistent for this type of thing to avoid future conflicts. I don't care if that policy is to allow it all or to forbid it everywhere, it just needs to be defined AND enforced in a clear way so people don't get sanctioned for what would be considered an innocent joke from someone else.
its all pixels on a screen to me
Don't bother trying to transcend your own bad habits. If that's how it was you'd find a better way to spend your time and never come back.
1. Your Minecraft name
PinkPanther1046
2. The date and time you were banned.
1/10/23, ~1AM PT
3. What type of activity you were doing at the time of the ban (e.g. chatting, building, using world edit, etc.) or state "offline" if banned while offline. For the purpose of the appeal, only use the term banned offline if you haven't been on the server in the past 24 hours AND do not have a ban reason specified. So for example, if you leave the server for 10 minutes and find you're banned when you try to return, that's NOT an offline ban for the purpose of the ban appeal - just state what you were doing just before you left the server and that found yourself banned on return.
Using WorldEdit
4. Why do you think you were banned (select the best choice below)? Admins should only ban based on the following policy: https://forum.totalfreedom.me/d/2961
a. I don't know because I did not violate any rule as noted in the server conduct policy.
5. Which admin banned you, and what were you told (if anything) before the ban occurred?
xPkz_
6. Have you reviewed and agree to the community guidelines (yes or no)? Please review the policy at https://forum.totalfreedom.me/d/2961
Yes
I was probably banned because someone thought I was just placing air for no reason with WorldEdit. This is wrong, I was actually placing an invisible block called moving_piston. It wasn't a pointless W/E, there was a point and the point was to prevent people from placing blocks in a certain area. It's not my fault if the server lags an insignificant amount because I was using W/E.
as far as I know, the current system allows ex-admins to reinstate without any vote or trial, as votes are only for admin applications and not reinstatements, so the enforcement of a trial system in reinstatements would not take away (or diminish) any power from OPs that they currently have, perhaps you confused reinstatements with admin applications?
this is for reinstatement, not people freshly applying for admin, so this isn't diminishing anyone's opinions n such on those.
Even then, I still don't think this is a great idea. The votes I was talking about are the votes that resulted in the original admin promotion, even if the application is for a reinstatement. There's already systems in place that should require admins to meet standards after reinstating, and if those aren't working, the issue could be resolved by enforcing current policy with less leniency rather than having an unspecified group determine the outcome of a probationary period.
I object. This seems like a good idea at first, but the issue I have with it is that it diminishes the opinions of the voters - especially OPs - for any given admin application. It gives the unknown person/group who controls the training process too much power in deciding whether the applicant gets the position.
As well as this, this "pathetic" situation (as described by you) is genuinely a case of you as an OP struggling to deal with the current rules we have.
The part about "stealing" items is actually a form of griefing (modifying builds) and is bannable. However, OP was right about the firework stuff being a false ban. There's no reason for an admin to sanction an op for literally just placing some fireworks. Coincidentally, any evidence of that was excluded from the provided video from ThePharmaPirate.
Not to speak for OP, but I believe the issue they (and I) have with you is that your response to criticism of not just yourself, but other staff is to label it as "drama" and ban people for it. People aren't exactly going to be happy about an admin screwing up a punishment, and you can't just assume that you or another staff member is going to assess the situation correctly every single time. Criticism of mistakes is not "drama," even if it involves some frustration on one or both ends of the discussion. If I were you, and if I had chosen to step into the situation(s) as you did, I would have made sure to double check what actually happened using concrete evidence instead of hearsay, and responded by either telling Pharma to correct his mistake by owning up to it, or if I still agreed with his decision, allow the operator to continue their criticism.
I'm going to have to agree with this. To add some validity to these claims and provide some more examples of this behavior, I saw this demonstrated from both the admins mentioned in the original post. The first thing happened when I returned around 5 days ago. I pasted in a build near spawn, and then a few hours later I was banned by ThePharmaPirate for it because it was supposedly "griefing." I knew it was nonsense, but didn't appeal because I decided it just wasn't worth the effort. The next day, I rejoined to assess the area where the build was to see if I had accidentally pasted it over anything. There were builds in the area, but they all had been put there after I had pasted mine. When I brought up the erroneous ban to him the next day and criticized him for it, his response was to mute me in-game. Then, Ashaz decided to step in by claiming that I was "stirring the pot," which I wasn't really doing. I then criticized him for making that claim, and his response was to ban me for an hour off the server.
Yeah, I will say negative things about people unprompted, and yeah, I have criticized Ashaz before. But both of these staff members have proven through their actions that they need to learn to respond properly to criticism. There's a difference between people who are just pestering others and causing drama and people who actually have criticism that is being communicated with good reason. Luke actually also erroneously banned me yesterday because he thought I was bypassing another ban, but I didn't mention him above because he responded correctly by apologizing and owning his mistake. Also, wasn't there some sort of rule/policy written about admin criticism specifically in the past that protected ops who criticized admins? I'm pretty sure that policy is still in effect. Nonetheless, I think something should be done about admins who punish ops because they don't like what they have to say.
I think he just values TotalFreedom as much as anyone should. Like, he would show up if he had absolutely NOTHING better to do. Glad to hear Steven has moved on to greener pastures, honestly.
The sad part is that this is the only viable advertising method since the server has no actual content.
????
For clarity, I mean that not enough people care for their opinion to be anything more than an opinion. If people really liked the freedom server for what it was, it'd consistently have a reasonable amount of players online rather than basically nobody.
Historically, people have found exploits, crashed/lagged the server once, and then reported it to the admins. This wouldn't happen and as such would impede the developer team's ability to find and patch these exploits. As the developer team currently has no access to logs, it'd be made even harder to find that shit. Currently we have to rely on player reports to patch shit, which isn't ideal.
That's what's historically happened throughout the time you've been here. There was definitely a time on TotalFreedom when the more vicious exploiters were feeling less nice and would wreck the server repeatedly, so much that it sometimes led to all-day downtime. I am not saying that the anarchy needs to be creative anarchy. (like Kaboom.) The lack of creative mode would throw a serious bone in people's ability to find exploits, and a lot of the things that have been found working in survival have been covered in Paper at some point. The result would likely be something with more chaos, but retain the same stability standard. The no access to logs thing is a problem, but that's a separate issue that honestly should just be resolved under the common sense reasoning that devs should have log access if they are expected to do a reasonable amount of work. That shouldn't be an optional thing and I think everyone here but one person would agree with you there.
I don't particularly enjoy the notion of the cat and mouse game of exploiters VS. developers the Scissors and TFM team currently enjoy being amplified 10x by an Anarchy community.
Again, I really think that if we ran a survival anarchy server, that'd dampen any sort of "amplification" of exploit discovery and usage that'd come with an anarchy community.
Unless you want to alienate most, if not all, of the current and past community, and by extension admin community, please, go ahead and implement this gamemode.
I agree! We should implement anarchy unless we want to alienate most of our current and past community. Over time, they've come here for "freedom," and that's what we should be trying to give them.
Anarchy players would inevitably start to seep into the regular Freedom gamemode, and as such most likely modify our existing community to something akin to ours and cause at least some amount of player loss. It's a bit similar to how a few people from Freedom went to Skyblock, if my memory of other people's accounts is to be believed, scared off the small community that was slowly but surely growing there and effectively destroyed the Skyblock gamemode's popularity.
I don't think the Skyblock gamemode failed because people from freedom started playing there. It was pretty obvious to me that it flopped because it's a duplicate of every other Skyblock server, but without a large community of players, and without any unique features at all. If there was any semblance of an actual community growing there, I seriously doubt it'd be additional players that scared them off. If I genuinely asked someone here why I should play the TF skyblock server over another one, they probably wouldn't have anything to say at this point. That isn't the case for Anarchy at all, and comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges.
I believe the Anarchy gamemode being implemented and it becoming successful would end up destroying TotalFreedom as we know it currently.
You know what? Good. The TotalFreedom as we know it currently isn't anything of significance. It's obvious nobody actually cares about the server, and it's long overdue for some serious improvements and changes.
But no, you keep going with your suspiciously specific idea of anarchy for TF, which reminds me of another place... I wonder which is it... oh right, that's how Eso works! Are you sure you don't have hidden intentions with us...?
Even if you haven't:
Do you seriously think I'm some sort of secret esotalk double-agent? Since you haven't noticed, I hate that forum because it's a platform for the owner, John, to socially engineer children.
How is this any different from now in practice?
Because many of the people who tend to be involved in behavior that risks TF's reputation are staff (or had been staff at the time.) Rather than being in a situation where we continually embarrass ourselves with staff-related incidents, any "toxic" behavior on anarchy is the sole responsibility of players. Not to say there wouldn't be admins to help manage and upkeep anarchy, but in the context of anarchy, the behavior is expected.
People are actually pissed when the server's unplayable because of crippling exploits, and we're more happy in preventing them from happening than having a cat and mouse game with exploiters.
So you're saying we're completely and totally sound at preventing exploits now? I beg to differ. But our server still is stable. Any server, even if that server is anarchy, can be stable if the development team is able to patch exploits and respond to bug-related issues on the server. There's always some degree of "cat and mouse" to it, but I'd say TotalFreedom has a strong enough "cat" to have a stable anarchy server.
Which can be interpreted in a number of ways.
The message of the forum post is clear. It states that there were no administrators, nor "rules, whitelists, and restrictions" that were seen as "the usual red tape" for a Minecraft server at the time. No rules, restrictions, or administrators means that it was an anarchy server by definition.
Only if we keep enforcing the basic rules that prevent arseholes from making everything unplayable and repulsive in less than a hour. This isn't 2010 anymore, unfortunately.
Unless you're talking about directly crashing or severely lagging the server, (both of which can be dealt with via patches,) a lot of the qualities that others might see as "repulsive" and "unplayable" are seen by the anarchy community as a challenge that makes the game more fun. For example, the spawn might get blown up and covered with lavacasts. This isn't standard for Minecraft, but in the anarchy community, it's part of the challenge. If you're talking about people being drawn away from the server because of offensive content, I think that those playing anarchy understand that there are no rules and people act accordingly.
Display MoreI mentioned this above, but there are a few reasons why a server with no rules shouldn't be a problem with TotalFreedom/Atlas:
- The server could be disconnected from the Bungee network and work just as well.
- Anarchy means the responsibility for any bad behavior as a result of "no rules" doesn't fall on TF/Atlas.
- TF is, and always has been associated with some extremely toxic behavior anyway, but often, TF staff are responsible. In Anarchy, this behavior is more expected and doesn't really "damage" the reputation of the server itself.
And none of it makes any differences. The reality is the rest of the servers on the network will be judged by the actions in that server, and from my own moral and ethical view, I wouldn't want people spouting some of the shit I suspect would be spouted.
Anything with TF's branding is required (And it's non negotiable) to follow the community guidelines. They're fairly loose as it is and for a game-mode like anarchy not a lot would necessarily need to apply, but some rules would apply either way.
I'm not willing to run servers under the TF or any other branding that would have no rules and no accountability of the players.
If it's really a requirement for servers to follow these community guidelines, and it's really against your morals to facilitate a place where breaking the guidelines is a normal occurrence, the Freedom server and a good portion of the discord should probably be shut down. I'm not even talking about rulebreakers that get banned, either. I'm talking about things that are actively noticed and ignored by TF staff: people discussing sexual content in front of children, jokes about rape and suicide, and promotion of illegal use of drugs/alcohol. I could spend hours digging up examples of this, but that would be a waste of my time. I'm not saying there's no enforcement of community guidelines at all, but the degree to which they are enforced on Freedom and the network we have now isn't enough to be making the argument that no enforcement at all would be any worse.
