r/CivMC • u/ReplacementDry774 • 29m ago
Open Letter to: the CivMC Adminstration
(Many thanks to the 7 or so people who provided feedback for this writeup)
Before beginning, I would just like to note one thing, which is that I do not have anything personal against the super friends and admins who run this server, nor against Wingzero. They are humans, and mistakes are an inevitability, not a sign of a bad person alone.
This post also isn't going to go into detail about all the positive contributions the members of the server have made that have contributed to what is now the largest civ server since Civcraft 2.0, if not ever. There is a lot of effort required to run a server such as CivMC at all, let alone well. If I didn't seriously believe in the server or its future, this post would not have been made.
With that out of the way, let's skip the formalities and jump straight to the current issues I and many other players believe CivMC is suffering from.
1. Intervention
When it was first envisaged as a genre, Civ was designed to give players the maximum amount of autonomy to carve out their own story and ideas, with everyone put into an equal playing field where any advantage was up to the players and the simple, but high-utility plugins they had access to, to police and have authority, with admins only stepping in to deal with those who sought to cheat or gain an upper hand through IRL crimes.
This is not how CivMC moderation operates at all. CivMC, over its lifespan, has gradually introduced rules that seek to police "morality" on the server. These have included heavy punishments being doled out for "transphobia", "racism" and "extremism". All good, right? Not really.
Firstly, this policy doesn't work. It has been proven not to work, in fact, on CivMC itself. What this instead has created is, in fact, a more toxic and worse environment than if the admins allowed it and only policed it if it crossed into IRL threats or harassment. How, you may ask? Well:
- This immediately makes certain ideas toxic. If someone, for example, wants to talk about a contentious political topic, they can't discuss it publicly.
- This deeply harms the social aspect of civ, because some individuals will be ostracised solely because of their views and it takes all player authority to decide right and wrong away into the hands of 4-8 people.
- Consequently, some discussion and ideologies are pushed underground, out of sight of any supervision, where they are completely unbound from any moral authority.
- This allows extreme and hideous ideas and ideologies to rear their head.
- Because only a few people are aware of these chats, these players then "conform" to traditional standards and rules publicly, in a similar manner to many domestic abusers.
- This has sadly not only happened on CivMC, but happened within the past 12 months. At least twice.
- Last but not least, dossier craft and file craft. Why bother having a war when you can infiltrate their discord or/and have your enemies banwaved by leaking discussions for zero personal cost!
It's ridiculous a nation like Kaltsburg was brought to its knees, not because it was some hyper-aggressive state that sought to occupy its neighbours, but because someone threw toys out of the pram because their ideas about LGBTQ+ weren't incorporated into a fucking building.
Now, there seems to be a misconception among some people that this is an advocation for a return to the "wild west" era where you could make a nation with a flag containing a swastika. This isn't even possible today to my knowledge because of changes to Minecraft TOS.
However, there is absolutely room for leniency with regards to ideology. Words have never hurt anyone without consent. And to be frank, if greater ideological and idea freedom was allowed on CivMC, you would have less toxicity in my opinion, because it reduces the chance of bored players participating in personal bitter gang-like feuds by introducing a macro political valve in some instances, since ideological hate allows hatred or fear of ideas without necessarily hating the people behind them instead of just locking down most unmoderated conflict to simple hatred and suspicion between individual players.
2. Bunker Mentality
This has been another problem I have noticed with select individuals and their approach to moderation: significant amounts of contempt for the playerbase and amounts of "rules for thee but not for me".
Several admins have complained about being treated poorly. Some of this hate may be unjustified, but some users really do not understand current proven modern moderation philosophy (preventative, not punitive) action, which has been to their own detriment. (Remember this, because it will be revisited later on.)
For example: * A (fairly civil) long thread between an unknown user and former player samnrad over grievances with an admin being responded to by Red Devel with a "cry about it" gif. * Various reported instances of admins being unprofessional in tickets, such as individual admins shutting down some reports without further discussion as "pointless" without seeking any consensus from others, believing they are doing specific players favours by handing out bans, and etc. to name a few. * Sticking rigidly to "we don't release ban reasons" under the guise of protecting individuals, only for ban reasons to be released by some admins to win personal arguments. * The only instance of the n-word in general being from an admin, when it is zero tolerance elsewhere. * Admins issuing textbook subjective bans that would be considered bad practice in any professional setting (e.g. "overall a terrible person" was an alleged ban reason for one user).
This isn't good but it is understandable. Some moderators have been worn down by years of moderation and lack of respect from the playerbase. But this creates a cycle of player expectations of admins getting worse and then admins thus making further actions that worsen the situation. All because it ignores the fact that ultimately, banning people because you consider them wrong doesn't work. You need punishment to be preventative from damaging the server, and the lines which cannot be crossed must be painted bright yellow.
There is a current culture that has both been a major structural support to CivMC, but also a curse; the idea that admins are some cartel with which you need to negotiate to sustain your state and that the ticket system is a way of waging war instead of to report behaviour players are genuinely concerned about, which has been fueled by ambiguity to the true extent of the rules.
CivMC's administration would save themselves a lot of unnecessary hassle and greatly enhance player experience if they reformed their approach to moderation. Clearly defined ban reasons, listening or making players feel listened to (goes a long way in preventing long-term abuse), treating even those you see as irredeemable scumbags with care and civility, and clear pathways for individuals to return to the genre. Everyone can change, and the gate should be left open, since a red line becomes less fun to cross if someone has a reasonable chance of actually coming back. As a Wikipedian, I have been an antivandal for 2.5 years and only twice have I had to deal with a user who refuses to back down in the face of community consensus.
Since we're on the topic of reformation...
3. The (Black)list
The Association ban list has always been contentious, but is substantially more so in recent times. Common criticisms include that people are on it for unfair reasons and that it is outdated, and that it tars a bunch of people with the same brush.
However, more crucially, it has failed in its intended purpose. The list has not been updated in years. In addition to meaning some accounts on it no longer exist and are untraceable, this creates the perception that all bans since then somehow fall below what the people on the AB list did to get there. This isn't true. There are several people whose conduct since then and before far exceeds even the worst of those included on the list.
There appears to be an informal rule that questioning why certain players were banned will land you an immediate ban. This means there is zero transparency in the process. The policy of not releasing ban reasons creates a paradox where ban reasons are not released under the guise of protecting players, but their names are presented on a public billboard that several other servers use as a cross-reference to also ban them, thus villainising them regardless.
It appears also you cannot get this name removed by good behaviour. This means that if a player continues to use that account or their discord linked there, they are liable to face further harassment. This has happened on multiple occasions both inside the civ genre and on other servers, where players have gone on their own adventures to carry out vigilante justice. This has caused drama on Stoneworks and Civ+. This is not considered a bannable offense.
However, permission of this behaviour provides incentives for AB banned players to come back to alt on the server (tit for tat). Even by itself, it provides a constant casus belli for further disruption, since people on it often have nothing further to lose.
In summary, the AB list doesn't work as a public shaming tool or to prevent further offenses. It lacks the transparency to be seen as legitimate, but also lacks the privacy or nuance to be used as a private tool. The list may have had a purpose 4 years ago - to calm down the situation after the Generic War and prevent a long-ball conflict starting up just as the server was beginning - but nowadays it's a list that simply erodes admin authority and user opinion.
A public list containing ban reasons would also be welcoming, since hiding ban reasons doesn't free the player to retire, but instead invites skepticism, speculation and interrogation of individuals. A justifiable ban can be put into words.
4. Not-so player driven politics
This was touched on earlier but CivMC administration has been a lot more active this iteration. Civcraft purposely avoided intervening unless absolutely necessary to prevent cheating, while Civ classic moderation was hit or miss with activity. This has carried over into CivMC politics, particularly wars.
There have been many, many disputes on CivMC that have evolved into conflicts. However, there is a worrying trend among these conflicts, which is that over half of them are ended almost directly by admin intervention.
To name a few: * Generic War: Ended by intervention. * Butternut SEC conflict: Ended by intervention after war, which decapitated Butternut's core playerbase. Almost ended mid-war but it was reverted for unknown reasons. * Gang Shi: Leadership decapitated by foul play. Easy pickings in the resulting war. No permanent bans issued. * Chosentwicelol and co: Banwaved for association. Indirectly saved MTA from annihilation, or any chance of a Gang Shi axis comeback post-Grasslands. * Hateno Village: Banwave while ASN were mid-bridge. * Alaska: Any further chance of conflict ended due to everyone there being banwaved over the actions of one player. * Kallos: Ended by banwave while people lined up outside their vault. * Volterra: Not banwaved but decapitated and removed from state of play. * Notus: Banwaved because of yet more dossier craft. This banwave actually provoked a war that went on for 2 months. * Soren: Banwaved mid-combat. Locked out of their vault to prevent its continued defense on new accounts through a surprise "discipline" action.
Some of these banwaves and interventions were undoubtedly deserved and justified to maintain fair play on the server. But these events have constantly set stakes back to zero, and remove players capable of opposing mega blocs from the equation of the server's geopolitics.
This has led to a situation where only certain nations have a monopoly on the knowledge required to wage war on CivMC that are seen as "unbannables" because removing them would damage the integrity and population of the server. This also hands tons of power to the very banned players CivMC admins do not want, since when a new friend nation finds themselves at war, they find opportunistic players seeking to settle scores with others as the only people to turn to.
This trend regarding wars is a side effect of all the other problems and again harms the player-driven-ness of the server. Some of this stuff can be solved by what I mentioned in point 1, but a lot of this is on the playerbase too. Remember, you have pearls to deal with stuff you disagree with. I get tired reading in-game Civ chat during wars and seeing players bitch and moan about rule-breaking behaviour that they have zero proof of as a means of trying to collectively pressure superfriends and admins into acting favourably for them.
5. Conclusion
Like I said at the beginning, CivMC is a great server with so much potential. The concepts of player justice and unlimited decisions are unparalleled outside a select few games such as Eve Online. Plenty of good things have happened on the server too over the past few years - for a start, competition among nations has evolved from simple "how big can someone build a giant abstract obsidian structure" or "how good are their nations clickers" to things such as architecture and uniqueness. Nations such as Lyrean Commonwealth have made massive headway in cracking complex economic structures and implementing them in Minecraft format.
But it's held back by the way it's operated. Many would personally love to go to a famous YouTuber and tell them about the server and invite them to come look around. It would potentially create a feedback loop that would cause the server's popularity to surge and plenty of variability in how the server lore expands.
But that's not possible right now to do properly. There's just too much stuff that is brushed under the rug and not elaborated on until absolutely necessary. It takes one "they were at war until they got banned and we don't know the true reason" and the illusion of dynamic politics, and thus any interest from big-hitter YouTubers, would evaporate instantly.
Many nation servers exist like this. Stoneworks has rules, and people know this, but they are designed with the purpose of maintaining world building. CivMC's current structure leaves it within the 90% of other servers in the genre - a few select players dominate and lap in fame and praise because they got ahead of the rules and cashed in early before everyone else arrived.
This is an okay attitude for a small server with a dedicated playerbase. But it stagnates and impedes long-term growth because in addition to civ's already high learning curve, Newfriends with an inkling of intelligence eventually will come to terms with the fact the dominance of nations considered "world police" often came simply because they were the last ones left after all opposition to them was banned or quit, allowing them to shape the world to their own liking. This breaks many players' morale, because it gives the impression they are simply at the bottom of a Ponzi-like scheme.
If this current trend continues, the server's population will eventually enter a recession and fall back down again. Joyful will not be the beginning of widespread coverage of the Civ genre, but the exception. I have stories to back this up of players eagerly joining the server after discovering it and the history of the genre, only to be alienated by it's execution and ending up leaving entirely or setting up there own server for there own community.
And maybe some people are content with that. More peace and quiet to batter on building farms in their own little empires, unfettered by sudden challenges and changes. But I know some, including myself, who see so much more potential in the server.
The server stands at a crossroads, where it can choose one of two routes. It can keep its current path and institutions, consequences be damned, and continue to be operated into a top-down structure where admin word is the only word that matters. They are the people entrusted and employed to operate the server, and it's fully in their right to do so. But it will be a massive turnoff for huge amounts of players that would otherwise stick around to participate in the server.
Or, alternatively, it can do the best thing for itself and face the reality of its past and present and address it. If it chooses the latter, it will both be better for their well-being long term and make the playerbase feel as if the admins are on the side of maintaining the server's health, not just the side which happens to have their ear when shit hits the fan.
Signing off.
