Hello folks, once again I'm writing another one of my blogs, made to make you think a bit. But this one is slightly different- I have decided to write a warning to you all- That's right, we as a community, may have a problem...

Very recently on the server I am an Admin on, we had a player come on and spam our chat with adverts for a server. Our reaction in these cases are all the same- an Admin jots down the IP, pops on and warns the Admins on that server that player X was caught advertising on another server. As a community we have an unwritten code of honour- this kind of thing is frowned upon by almost every server. These kind of reports we make to Admins are usually greeted with thanks and the person is either warned, punished in some way, or even in some cases, banned from the server they were advertising for.

Advertising other servers online isn't a very nice way of doing things- it can steal members to other servers, depleting player bases, causing players to leave and general distress to some younger kids who see someone spamming chat and get worried. Advertising on a server isn't nice at all, and some developers on BukkitDev have made some plugins to block anyone typing IP's into chat, similarly to how censors work.

But returning to our story today, the astounding thing we found upon visiting a certain server, we were astounded... One of the rules of the server was to 'advertise on other servers for us!', literally telling people to go on other servers and trying to convince them to join this unknown small server! After a bit of digging, we found out that players are actually rewarded for the number of people they 'recruit' through advertising for the server, earning custom prefixes and permissions!

Our Admin confronted the Admins on the other server, basically telling them that this is not cool, that for advertising purposes there is PMC, which almost every server uses to advertise their server and showcase themselves. Turns out their Admin didn't like the advice that was given, and our Admin was promptly banned.

After hearing this insane story and actually checking it out myself, I contacted a number of high-profile players I am friends with who run major servers, and asked them if they've seen anything similar cropping up. It seems that over the past 2-3 weeks, new servers have been cropping up with these kinds of rules to boost their numbers.

I was very upset to hear this for a number of reasons- Firstly, why would someone go to the trouble of making a server and then give themselves a bad name through doing stuff like this? Clearly the server won't be attracting the 'cream of the crop' they expect, it will be kids hoping for a fast promotion. Secondly, unwritten code of honour, guys... We all know it is wrong. We know that it shouldn't be done. So why does a small minority think it is OK to trash-talk other servers and spam their chat with an alternate IP? Its not cool, and any server that has to rely on such tactics to get members will probably be dead in 3 months. Lastly- we have PMC for all our advertising needs. There's even specific chats so that you can talk about servers with other people! The entire server page is dedicated to the adverts of servers trying to gain members- please, just use that!

Its upsetting to see this trend emerging, and it in no way helps the community. Please, if your server employs these tactics, take a step back and just think- Is this the right way to gain members?

As always folks, please leave a comment below with your thoughts, or if you've had this experience yourself! Tell me what you make of it, and try and help me understand why people do this!
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