Moderating a Minecraft server

Just as server settings are subject to debate, so is moderating a server. Everyone does it in their own way. But how efficient and good your server settings are is measurable. How well you moderate is much less measurable. Therefore, please see this part of the guide as well-intentioned advice and not as hard rules.

Rules and sanctions

Before you can decide what rules to implement, it's important to determine what kind of server you want to run. After all, a family-friendly server for children has very different rules than an anarchy server. Often you will be looking for a balance between player freedom and player safety. For most servers, a good basis to adhere to is: a player's freedom stops when other players are bothered by actions.

Before the server opens

Before your server opens, set the rules. In a small server with friends, you agree among yourselves that you will not cheat, use X-ray or other tools. In a server for larger audiences, this is often not enough. What do you do when someone deliberately tries to cause lag and where do you draw the line in the chat? One tip is to bring out the bad in yourself and think about what you don't want to have.

Below is a list of actions that are prohibited on many servers:

• Chat
  • Cursing/racism
  • Spam
  • Advertising
  • Sharing private information
  • Threatening players
  • Inappropriate name/skin
• Game
  • Inappropriate Buildings
  • Griefing
  • Anti-afk system
  • Lagging
• Hacks
  • X-ray
  • Hacked Client
  • Bug abuse
• Server
  • Corrupt making inventories
  • Crashing server

With a server for larger audiences, you should also share the rules. Publish them on your website, put them in the spawn or give players in the lobby a book. This way the players know what is and what is not allowed on your server. This also stops the excuse: "I didn't know this was forbidden".

Enforce and discuss

After you have determined the rules and the server is open, you must enforce the rules. One advice is to at least make sure that different staff members are giving out the same punishments.

You can also talk with the moderator team on a regular basis. Ask if the rules are still sufficient, if anything unusual has happened and maybe adjust some rules. In this way you remain flexible and grow with your community.

Moderation tools

Make it as easy as possible for moderators with good tools. CoreProtect, for example, allows you to log all player actions and fix them. Make sure you have a good plugin that keeps track of IP history; this way alt accounts can be easily identified. Furthermore you can use an anti-cheat plugin, chatfilter or inventory-backup plugin. In general you can say that the more data you store, the more you can find, reset or use.