- Be a mature, well rounded, respectful level headed adult. (Or at least act like one)
- Don't cheat, for you, or anyone. Ever. No exceptions.
- Don't offer any perks what so ever for donations.
- or, don't offer donations at all!
- Don't just let any idiot in. Server size is meaningless. Only let in good well rounded mature players, their "leet build skills" are meaningless. You want good PEOPLE not good builders. (This is where nearly all kid-servers fail)
- Don't make a PVP server, those are retarded. Real players don't play on PVP servers. (I might be bias here)
- Gear your server for mature players. If you're not a mature player yourself, give up now.
- Read my server's rules, ethics and about us page. If you can't pull off what I have in my About Us page, don't bother. You'll just end up like all the other 50 million junk servers. ;)
For those that will flame me, deal with it. That's what it takes to make a good server. I've ran a very successful private server for 3 years, good luck finding any server on par with that anywhere on the internet. ;)
Search for "Mature Minecraft Server" and click on the first result, if you want to see what it takes to make a quality server. :D