dureja_av's Ban Appeal

Today, I was banned for the following: "warping to loot, stealing from chestshops, breaking every single rule in the bug exploitation section", along with five other people (_MOSKITO_, beaston29, ndvenckus1, granniss, and NightlyReminders).

A few days ago, I had heard that Forgotten Cliff had been deleted from Towny. After remembering a few things about the town, I remembered an old mod had lived there, emilyburke. She also had a shop in town, and I remembered the /warp for it, so I did /warp bargains to check out the old place. After spawning there, I saw her shop, but with no signs. Confused at what had happened, I kept going on, checking out the neighboring plots. I went back, and being the curious person I am, I opened a chest. It had mushrooms, and I was guessing that an admin removed the ChestShop signs and had forgotten to clear the chests of their contents. I went to the other sections of her shop and came back with some blocks such as sand, wool, and stone brick.

I would like to admit to the "warping to loot" part of the ban, but I do not think just warping to loot is worthy of a permanent ban. However, I would like to focus on the next few accusations. The part about "stealing from chestshops" was not at all my intention. I had gone to visit an old town I remembered a bit and I saw there were open chests all around, thinking someone had removed the ChestShop signs. Because they were unlocked, I thought that they were game for anyone to take. In no way did I try to glitch out the ChestShop plugin, as these chests didn't even have signs with text in the ChestShop format. Finally, I would like to focus on the "breaking every single rule in the bug exploitation section". I will list each rule out and put my response to each of them.

1. This includes, but is not limited to item duplication or taking advantage of bugs in plugins.

I did not duplicate any items, and I was not aware that there was a 'bug' in the plugins.

2. Stealing from chests/shops that should be locked, but aren't due to plugin fail. How are you supposed to know? If it has a shop sign, it should be locked! If it's at someone's house among other chests, it should be locked too. Best way to check is to place an anvil in the same chunk as the chest. If it doesn't work, then that area is buggered.

The shops did not even have the ChestShop signs over the chest, so they weren't even registered as a shop with the ChestShop plugin. Although I didn't place an anvil in the same chunk, I am confident that the area was not 'buggered'.

3. If you are caught doing anything like this, you will be banned!

I have just justified my reasons in the above 2 rules ^^

4. If you discovered a bug/exploitation by accident report it, not reporting it will get you banned too!

I don't understand how I exploited anything. I found chests that were unlocked with items in them that weren't registered as ChestShops and I looted them.

5. As a general rule if you feel like something happened that shouldn't have, report it to an admin or a mod instead of hiding it and getting banned for it later on.

I looted unlocked chests. We have LWC for a reason, so I'm presuming that looting chests is still legal.

Also, the looting part of the rules says this:

Stealing from unlocked chests is ok.

Because of that rule, I thought that stealing the items was just fine.

After talking to staff, they had told me that after towns are deleted from the Towny plugin, the signs in the town are removed, including ChestShop signs. I was not aware of this flaw in the Towny plugin, and I'm sure most general members are not aware of this either. Perhaps a warning on the forums or an addition to the town section of the rules would be beneficial for other people, so they don't get stuck in this situation like me.

In conclusion, I obviously believe I should be unbanned. I had no notification of this, and there were no places where this was said in the rules. Although I did /warp to loot, I don't believe such actions call for a full permanent ban. I will gladly replace any items I had looted as well. Even if it is converted to a temporary ban for even a week, I would be fine. Shade Crest has provided us with such a great facility to play Minecraft in peace that it would be disheartening to be banned permanently. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

 

Also, if this really was a 'glitch', it'd be great for staff to notify people of this and take action on the ChestShop situation in ForgottenCliff, such as locking up ChestShops again and maybe even making it impossible to get into the town with some kind of barrier or plugin. I know that such actions would take extensive measures, but six people getting banned for this is a bit too much.

 

we didn't know that the shops were deleted until Erik found out that all the shops were missing and people had been looting.

 

And moreover, if you find a shop sitting there, with no signs above the chests, but stuff still in the chests, you don't think to notify a staff? If it's legal, you get to Keep the loots, if not, you avert a situation like this.

 

No disrespect to the staff at all, but if this has happened for the first time, then why are we permanently banned? No one was aware that this was a bug at the time. We went to these 'shops' and saw unlocked chests with blank signs. To be honest, I thought it was an admin that had removed the signs or even a new inactivity plugin that erased the older shops. We saw open chests with items in them and we looted them. How were we supposed to know that this was a bug anyways? I can bet that these anvils will still work in the same chunk as well. Because this has happened for the first time, we should just be given temporary bans for warping there or even warnings to replace the items in there or a punishment will occur. The reason why I am so frustrated is because we were unaware of this problem.

I thought wasn't a shop if there were no ChestShop signs above the chest. There's no way we could have actually exploited the ChestShop plugin if it wasn't even present in the first place. I found unlocked chests and stole the items. I didn't get hacked clients and run some weird program in the background that somehow goes through the ChestShop plugin. Why would I notify a staff member of unlocked chests in a shop if I thought that an admin removed them? After all, I'm sure the permissions plugin allows admins to break ChestShop signs or go into ChestShops.

I'm sorry, but I am genuinely confused by your statement of "If it's legal, you get to Keep the loots, if not, you avert a situation like this." If you could please explain what you meant by that, it'd be greatly appreciated, but what I understood was that looting out of unlocked chests is legal according to the rules, so I'm confused how I'm being accused of exploiting plugins and bugs.