it was so much easier to run minecraft classic servers than modern servers ever were

i'll never forget the last week of running my classic server when they announced that classic was being discontinued

this was back in the skype era and group chats weren't as simple to arrange so it was essentially the last chance to say goodbye to my small community

i don't remember any of their names now

i'm lying, I remember one

i'm not sure why he tolerated me

i was really really terrible to him,

not in a malicious way intentionally, I was a stupid adolescent kid with a crush on a boy who was very obviously straight

i dunno. i've always been terrible to everyone i've fallen for

i am a toxic romantic

it's probably better that i stay single, there's never a healthy fallout of relationships i get myself into

oh right, this was supposed to be about minecraft classic

it was nice to feel i had purpose

i've never been a 'conventional' admin. very opinionated and on hair trigger with my moderation

though in a way that's always kinda been what's made my communities kinda tight whenever i chose to build them. people i didn't get along with were swept away quickly, and so even though plenty of innocent creatures would be banned, i've always been able to build that type of community where everyone basically all got along with each other, since i only kept everyone that thinks the same way

i don't reckon there's been any community i've been in a moderator/admin position where i've operated in anyn different way since this first foray into community management. i'm consistent with that, I do vibes-based moderation, if i don't like you personally i'll throw a ban, that's just how it is

definitely made everything i've ever been in chaarge of a huge echo chamber though, i'm not going to deny.

i've always been proud of how my minecraft classic server turned out, it's my greatest life achievement personally. This was during a time where you'd appear in the server browser on the website and that absolutely inflated the numbers, but it felt kinda great and fueled my childhood narcissism to build up a place that 18,000 unique players gave a try, and a good 500 ish made home.

i recall having a limit of 60 active players for most of the server life, that's what my PC could handle. it wasn't a 24/7 server, it was only online when I was. on a typical day, i'd open up the server after school and within 15 minutes i'd see usually 15-20 familiar usernames, and since that was usually enough players to get on page 1 of the server browser sorted by player count, I'd meet 100-150 new players a day.

this was, of course, incredible fuel for my 12-year-old ego

I have no reason not to believe that this thing is the sole reason I refuse to mature. I'm always chasing the same high of feeling big and important as I did as a puppy. I can logically see it as unhealthy but I feel it's a waste of life to live logically. Having my greatest achievement (even if mundane to anyone else) come so early in life always made me feel like I'm shit at being an adult, so is it worth bothering to try harder? I'm an attention-seeker at heart and this won't change no matter how many times I'm told that's an undesirable trait

I want to make something big and feel adored by the masses and make-believe that I'm important. I want all the eyes on me just for being me

I think there's plenty of people who also want this but with all their strange allistic "rules", saying it out loud for them is a social faux pas and cracks their built illusion in their circles that they are perfect. I don't like dishonesty, I'll say straight out that's my desire to those who care to ask. I don't feel embarrassed of having an aspiration of fame

though in another way i'm achieving as well what i do strive to be, and that is honest, in a world full of deception

it seems generally the case that honesty and fame are mutually exclusive

wouldn't it be such a dream to break the mould, if it so is destined to happen that i do one day create a thing people find important enough, and to do it without cheating

i wear my intentions on my sleeve

never to the point where i start feeling like i'm too important to interact with fans. i've always found that absurd. i seethe over popufurs all the time for doing that shit, they seem most prone to it early at even relatively low numbers. nobody is so good enough over anyone else that you can just ignore anyone who doesn't have something of value to give to you. that's so fucked up

"i can't be seen favoriting a post from someone who has less than 1000 followers" type bullshit. get out

@vivi “very opinionated and on a hair trigger” has and always will be my moderation style

@vivi honestly, to back this up, when i moderated [redacted server], there were two admins + me. the first admin had a moderation style very much like me and the community was good, welcoming, and friendly. we tolerated zero bullshit from players. we were very very protective of everyone who invested their time, and there was definitely a clear sense of trust between long-time players and the mods. new players were always on probation until we learned who you are

when that admin passed it on to his friend (the aforementioned second admin), that one was much more the “lets listen to what they have to say” type people. a lot of bad actors made it into the server and it was much harder to get rid of them. the community quickly felt like every other minecraft server – chat didn’t flood constantly from different conversations, new players weren’t welcomed, and everything was met with passive or even open hostility.

so yeah fuck that ill be the terrible mod

@rowan i don't think there's any other way really. you have to be able to step on toes a little bit to moderate a community well

or you could end up like chitter.xyz where you host a self-confirmed zoophile and say "mmm ahh yeah but he wasn't ever acting zoophilic on THIS instance so, oopsie woopsie hands tied nothing we can do!!... also aren't all furries a little zoophilic, c'mon just admit you're a dogfucker pleeease " and live a tragic life of indifference

@rowan @vivi I actually think that this is one of the better approaches because like, some people are just kinda awful on the internet. I’m not talking about the ones who are doing something clearly wrong like being intolerant or harassing people, but the ones who are just unnecessarily condescending or aggressive towards people. the reddit approach is to let people like that stay because “they’re not doing anything wrong”, which leads to… reddit. and also this lets fashy types cause a lot of harm while still staying just on the right side of the rules

I much prefer vibes-based moderation because it’s a great way to deliberately cultivate a good community. the community becoming an echo chamber is definitely a risk, but I think there’s an important distinction between {a community that exists to discuss important topics where a wide variety of tolerant viewpoints need to be expressed} and {a community that exists to have fun playing Minecraft}

even for the former type of community, I think someone getting heated or acting condescending should still be given a warning at least because that can quickly lead to… reddit

also I’ve been thinking about the fact that moderation, in the current way that we conceptualize it, is hierarchical: the mods have power that other users don’t. and I’ve been wondering if maybe there’s a way to create the moderation equivalent of a representational democracy or something like that, with as much transparency as possible. since obviously Mod Problems™ are a thing that happens and there needs to be a way for ordinary users to know that it’s happening and do something about it

@vivi I respect this so much to be honest, and I can relate to wanting this too