Hey guys.


I'm here today with what I suppose is a plea to the powers that be. A plea to clean up the rapidly declining quality of the content submitted on PMC.

When I first came here around a year ago, most of the mods in the mods section were relatively decent. Yes, there was a fair few "emerald/obsidian tools" mods and the likes, but MOST of them were original ideas. Bukkit plugins and extra software were both extremely rare sights.

Take a look at it now. It's full of JUNK! Every other mod is doing the most unoriginal, generic thing; assuming it does anything at all.

This isn't restricted to just the mods section of course - I've seen countless blogs about how the blog section is full of rubbish, and when you bump up in the servers area you're forced down by 50 new servers which will be closed down in the next week.

So, here is my suggestion - tighten the rules on submissions. Blogs should require original content, and a relatively decent level of grammar. I don't mean Oxford/Harvard essay-level stuff, but if dey tlk lyk dis, then it should not be a blog.
Mods should have a relatively original idea. Mods which only add ores and a tool set should fall under the same category as the dirt-diamond mods. Dimension mods with no real purpose are the same thing. Plugins I personally feel should stay on the official platform*, but others have disagreed with me in the past, and 3rd party software which doesn't directly effect gameplay (so anything from a NBT editor to a chrome theme) should be purely kept to the forums.

Thats about all I have to say. Planet Minecraft used to be a great place for getting decent content but it's quickly becoming a wasteland.


*By "official platform", I mean the BukkitDev site. They check every single plugin every time it is uploaded for malicious code - If you as a user don't DOWNLOAD from there you are at risk. Developers have absolutely no reason to upload here because that platform works fine - if they're putting their plugins here, you ought to think; what are they hiding that stops them being approved on bukkit.dev.

Lets Get Constructive!
Alright, it's all well and good complaining about something, but what's the point of that if we don't suggest an alternative?
So, here's my suggestions, based on the feedback in the comments, about how to fix up the relevant sections of the site.

Mods
Moderators need to be stricter with "basic" mods. Anything which the developer probably wouldn't use themselves in their favourite server or map shouldn't be allowed (ie, buggy, early releases). Anything which adds nothing more than tools/ores should be a no-no, and simple dimensions with a single biome and no fancy/useful features should also not be allowed.
Plugins, as mentioned above, should certainly not be up as a simple matter of security; the developers have no reason or need to post here. Finally, software and other tools or 3rd party copygames should be kept on the forums.

Blogs
Basic grammar should be required. Nothing extreme, but at least keeping with the quality of this post, as an example - I've got a few typos but I'm generally on the right track. For example using a capital I instead of lower case, and commas/full stops in all the right places. If you're doing writing designed for reading and sharing, this is a common courtesy to the reader and should be a minimum requirement of blogs.
A few new categories could be quite useful too; for example a "Rants and Raves" section where blogs like this one could go, or a Creation Log where early WIP projects (of any kind; mods, worlds etc) can go - and in there you'd be allowed to post a link to the finished result once it's done (currently not allowed)

Skins
I'm not sure what to suggest to keep originality up here. I'm open to ideas because judging from the comments, there are "fashions" of people all submitting very similar skins. Maybe a category system like the blogs section has could help keep content flowing nicely?

Texture Packs
I don't see any issues here, I think it's all working nicely. But hey, if you're doing a cleanup, it might be time to fix the name to Resource Packs? ;)

Servers
Servers should have a warmup period after the initial submission where it's not yet visible. Server owners can of course submit and hide their post if they want to have a set "release date", but this would cut down on the spam.
Lets say the grace period is 3 days. The server stats will be tracked, and if uptime falls below 90%, the submission is rejected. At the end of the 3 day period, the administrator can come to to "activate" their listing, which stops people from just submitting the server and never returning.
Also, any server falling below 80% uptime should be automatically disabled. It can be reactivated once the server returns to above 80% uptime - this would help keep the list clean.
Finally, if a server is currently offline it should be hidden from the recently updated list.

Projects
Projects are another tough one. I'd say this should just be moderator discretion, with a rough minimum build time for something. If it looks like it only took 15 minutes to make, it's probably not worth having on the site.

These suggestions may seem a little extreme, but I think they'd be for the best. I imagine quite a few of the site users; even the moderators, may not use other Minecraft community areas - but I do. I can tell you right now, PMC has become the laughing stock of these communities, they associate it with a bunch of kids submitting sub-par content. Lets get that fixed and make PMC a proper hub for all real content creators to use in a responsible way.


UPDATE:
People have mentioned two things in the comments recently and I'd like to cover them here.

1. The moderators aren't doing their job / are overworked
This seems to be quite split. Some people say the mods have too much to do, and we're asking too much of them. Others complain that they just don't do their job and sit in chat instead.
Personally, I don't think either are true, but I don't use chat and I have no idea how much stuff actually gets reported... or how many moderators there are for that point - but if they are being overworked, they just need to get more. There's an endless stream of people who want to be moderators, so I'm sure a few of those people would be good at the job.

2. The Greenlight process is designed to prevent this.
From what I've seen, the greenlight process does not work. It's a great concept, but the moderators who control it need to make sure they read the content. Yesterday, I went through and reported about 30 blogs in the article section which were spam - either something which is a forum post (which is quite different to a blog), or just a server ad. Many of these, including many of the server ads, were level 1 people. Server ads in articles are one of the main things which is against the rules - so if these people really are being checked before the blog is posting, how are those blogs appearing?