Well I've spent 4 weeks at home, and I've been on PMC probably 4-5 hours and I've noticed this now so much that I had to do a rage on it, and it will probably be the ragiest blog in a while, so here goes.


Be honest now, who of you reading this has read the rules? I mean all the rules, the site, forum and chat rules. Because it increasingly feels like not many members have. The rules aren't even particularly long, it's not like reading the terms of service of some software, with a Tolkienesque wall of text, that rambles on and on about the same stuff over and over again, for as far as your mouse wheel can scroll. Its 19 paragraphs and it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to read and understand. They are not difficult to understand either, don't flame; listen to the moderators; ito s probably not a good idea to give your personal information to complete strangers Etc etc. I just read through the rules quickly, none of them are difficult to understand, an 8 year old could understand those rules. Now leto s look at rule-breaking on each individual part of the site.


Chat rule-breakers make me laugh more than any other. Even the whole "I never read the rules" excuse (Which most definitely isn't a valid excuse) can't be used here, because the rules are right in front of you. 15 lines, takes about a minute to read and understand those. Yet still people complain they've been treated unfairly. "WTF Rage, why did you infract me?" What do you mean why did I infract you, have you not read the rules? The rules that are right in front of you. And still people complain. Another popular chat complaint is about infractions and bans. People insist they should have received a written warning before being infracted or kicked. Why? It's not our job to tell you the rules, it's our job to enforce them, the infraction is the warning. If you were too lazy to read the rules before posting in chat, then you break one, we'll infract you, simple as. You have no excuse; you should have read the rules. Then when rule breakers realise they won't get their way via this complaint, they try another complaint, the "Ultimate threat", they threaten to report the moderator in question to paril, zaralith or cyprezz. Woah. Srs business guys. This is such an empty and useless threat it's unreal. You can see the reasoning behind it, they think that by threatening it, the moderator will cower down to this members demands, and unban them, and never mess with them again, because they don't want to be demoted. Except, oh wait, the moderation team aren't 5 years old. We have common sense, if you do write a PM to paril, zaralith or cyprezz; it won't come to any fruition if its a baseless claim. What are they going to do? Demote the moderator for doing their job? What do you think goes through Paril's head? "Quick, that moderator infracted someone for spamming chat with their submission, better demote them" No, of course he isn't, he's going to look at your logs, see the moderator did right, and you are just going to end up looking like a bit of a butthurt fool. But that's enough about chat now, onto the forums.


The forums is an area of the site I deal with far less now than I used to, but looking at it, the rule-breakers seem just as foolish as those in chat. I look at those with the most warnings, and some of them are the same warning, they've been punished for the same thing twice. It seems bizarre to me that these people get so many warnings, after 2-3 warnings I'd make a point to check the rules to make sure I don't break them again. After all it's not like you can make another account once you've been banned, having a second account to circumvent a ban you've received is punished with permanent bans, no warnings, just bans. The forum are incorporated with the site rules, so they aren't easy to miss, you should be reading those before you post anywhere on the site.



The "Site" aspect of Planet Minecraft is the area I focus on the most, this is pretty much everything that isn't chat or the forums. And this is where I see a majority of rule-breaking, and get a majority of hate from. In any given day, we're likely to have about a hundred reported submissions to deal with, although 200-300 is a more realistic figure. And we are dealing with these nearly constantly, the amount of submissions being reported every day is huge. And they cover all sorts of topics. Some may just be people who have been banned from a server trying to get their own back, but a huge majority are valid reports, submissions to be removed, and these require a differing amount of effort to investigate. A steve skin or an obviously stolen skin can be removed in seconds, but a texture pack may take 5 minutes to determine. Skins definitely seem to be the most stolen submissions, usually from websites such as minersneedcoolshoes or applications like skindex. These definitely are not valid places to make skins. We know what the most popular skins look like, the parts from the armory, and the base skins. Yet people still upload these and then moan when we remove them. Why? You haven't made the skin, someone else made several parts, you slotted them together, downloaded it and then uploaded it too Planet Minecraft. I get moaned at for all sorts of reasons, but none of them are valid. It's not hard to read the submission rules, they are right above the site rules in the forums, all you have to do is read the universal rules and the rules applying to your submission type. And they're bullet points, they don't take long to read, a mere minute or two. So why are they broken so often? We will punish you with increasing severity each time you break the rules, until you stop breaking the rules and reform yourself, or end up getting perm-banned. And then you can never upload again, so you may want to read those rules.

In reality, I know that this blog will change nothing, it won't stop people from being idiots and breaking the rules, and it certainly won't stop them whining like a petulant 5 year old whose had their toys taken away, every time they are punished for breaking those rules. But if you're reading this, just stop and think, have you read the rules? Because if you haven't, go read them now, and it could save a lot of hassle in the future.

Site rules: www.planetminecraft.com/forums/official-site-rules-t1040.html

Submission Rules: www.planetminecraft.com/forums/rules-submissions-t40929.html

Tl;Dr: Read the rules, read the rules, don't break the rules, if you break the rules-take it like a man, don't whine-it's your fault, read the rules.