Arbitrary banning?

[ChaosRealigning]

Hi there,

I am trying to find out why my son was just banned from your server. He is quite upset by this and insists that he hasn't done anything wrong. His username is ChaosRealigning. The reason given when he tries to reconnect is 'griefing' but, as I say, he insists that he hasn't done anything that would justify this.

Please respond to this message. He is genuinely upset and cannot explain why this has happened. If there really is something that has led to his being banned, he needs to know what the problem is.

Thank you,

Concerned parent.

[ProducerDanny]

Hi there,

I watched your son playing. We have a very strict ruling on no griefing or stealing, griefing being destroying other peoples property. I initially saw him take a chest with signs belonging to the community. After telling him to put it back, he also gave me other stuff that he could not have got, such as a Christmas present from an admin from December.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I asked the admins not to jail him yet as he seemed innocent enough. However we did keep tabs on him. The cause of his banning was due to him finding himself in someone elses' area (again, trespassing is against the rules) and then destroying glass to get out, which is hard to replace. As a result, the admin on the server banned your son for griefing.

I hope this clears up the reason.

[Memery]

Hello there,
It isn't often my policy to post in "Records of the BanHammer" but I saw your son break another player's chest and take it's contents. It was only after several requests made by myself and another player (DannyC96) that he finally returned what he took, with no indication of an apology. From this point on Danny and LadyBountiful kept an eye on him until he was eventually banned for "griefing someone's property" as Danny put it.

I'm sure LadyBountiful will get back to you very soon with what happened after I left, but I can assure you that a Ban is never made without good reason. I suggest that if your son wishes to come back that he apologises for not respecting other people's property (Speaking only from what I saw) and if he is allowed back on to take care around things that do not belong to him.

[Zedwick]

I did not handle his ban, but Danny and Memery's account is in line with my understanding of the situation.

We have our rules clearly marked where players join our server. Many servers have rules for how to behave, and they can vary greatly between servers. Our rules state you may not "grief" nor "steal". Both of which were broken by your son.

Griefing is a generally understood term in minecraft to mean breaking blocks which do not belong to you, though the true meaning is to cause grief to other players by breaking blocks, adding blocks, killing animals or otherwise messing with how they play and upsetting the other players. Some people are new to playing Minecraft on public multiplayer servers and may not understand the term, we'd generally expect them to simply ask if they do not understand a rule.

The Zedwork servers are not designed to cater to younger players, though all are welcome to play so long as they can approach the community with a certain level of maturity and respect. Unfortunately, it did not seem ChaosRealigning respected other players and their builds/items. I understand he perhaps did not understand our rules or perhaps the nature of the server he was playing on, as some servers do allow and encourage "raiding" (taking blocks/items from anyone's houses). Perhaps these are the kind of server he was looking for?

I'm afraid I would be apprehensive to urban him on this server (Zedwork LVS), as it is a vanilla server which means we lack a lot of tools to monitor players activities closely to check up on him. We do run another server, called Zedwork Zurvival, which does have logging and build protection to allow players to prevent players breaking blocks or removing items from chests. It is, unfortunately, not yet updated to the latest version, so you would need to downgrade to an earlier version (1.7.10), which you can do in the launcher for Minecraft. ChaosRealigning is welcome to try playing over there, if he would like.

If ChaosReligning chooses to play on Zurvival, or go on to play on any other server, I would suggest you go through the rules with him to ensure he understands them and how to follow them to prevent this happening in future. There are servers set up as family, or child-friendly, servers where parents and children play together. I would suggest such a server would be a good fit, as they provide much more guidance as-well as more children of a similar age to play with.

[ChaosRealigning]

Hello again,

Thank you so much for the prompt and detailed reply. I now have a much better understanding both of the game rules and of the situation regarding my son's behaviour on your server.

He and I have read your replies together and have discussed the reasons behind the ban, which I now realise was entirely justified. He has agreed that an apology is in order and has promised to write one. I will post it here when it is finished. I leave the matter of his possible reinstatement in your capable hands.

In the meantime I would like to apologise on his behalf for any inconvenience or loss to you or your members. I hope that the missing and damaged items can be regenerated without too much effort.

Sincerely,

Concerned parent