A moral dilemma - was I right or wrong

[b0bst3r]

The rules:

No griefing, no stealing

The situation:

Two players had made there homes in someone elses quarry, digging up the ores as the quarry removed the stone.

The deposition:

Although the ore does not belong to the quarry owner as it's in the world, with no claim as such does this class as stealing or not. If the 2 players were not there, then that ore would belong to the quarry owner, unless someone else took it. Is it stealing, is this as close to borderline griefing/stealing as you can get?

Just to clear something up we are NOT talking about ores which lay in the sides of the quarry, we're talking about taking the ore which the quarry would have mined on the next pass over.

Ores which lay in caverns do not belong to anyone simply because there's no intent on anyone taking it. Since a quarry is working on said boundaries there is intent to take the ore, therefore to me it is stealing.


Agree/Disagree/Thoughts?

I'd be interested to know what everyone would do as a server owner in this case and how you would feel if you was the quarry owner.

 

[PoisonWolf]

If no clear guidelines were given prior....then it is fair game. Tell the quarry owner to do it in oceans and it won't be as easy to one up the quarry.

It is still, however, a crappy thing to do.

 

[Rednpd]

I think it's ethically wrong but doesn't break the rules. It could possibly be considered greifing but you'd need to prove they did it to annoy the quarry owner.

Personally I would just talk to them and tell them not to do it again.
As the quarry owner how I feel would depend on whether or not this was my first quarry or just another one out of a trillion.

 

[Siro]

If we replace the quarry with a player it's much less of a dilemma. Picture a player digging out a large area in a methodical boring fashion. Now picture these two guys walking around behind him and taking anything remotely valuable before he can get to it. While he may not seem to give a damn, and it isn't strictly stealing or griefing, it's a pretty dickish thing to do given that the world is basically (definitely with mystcraft ages) infinite. Then again there's always the possibility they're actually working with the guy and silk touching stuff for more material via machine processing than might be provided by the quarry. As a server owner, I'd find out if the quarry owner intended to have people in his quarry and if not build him an age for future quarrying or suggest using oceans as PoisonWolf mentioned.

 

[Loufmier]

it may be unethical, but if there was no interaction with blocks that was placed or claimed via land protection plugins, there was no griefing nor stealing.
its like hating the guy who bought last hot-dog before you.

 

[Infallible83]

its like hating the guy who bought last hot-dog before you.

It's more like hating the guy that has pushed in front of you to take the last hotdog.

Not against any rules but a scumbag thing to do.

 

[Omicron]

I would define that as griefing, and punish accordingly.

These two players are knowingly and intentionally disadvantaging (not to mention being rude to) another player. There is no excuse for this behavior that is not automatically a form of arguing semantics over what constitutes griefing, or what is covered by the rules and what isn't. Whenver you run into such a situation, you can be 100% sure that the offending player is intentionally trying to exploit a hole in the wording of the rules. Such a player will never be interested in upholding the spirit of the rules; in fact, he is putting effort into breaking, bending and circumventing that spirit while still not openly breaking the wording.

Do you want to support such behavior on your server? I know I wouldn't.

 

[Julian Zhou]

While it is a scumbag move, there is nothing against doing so. It doesn't violate any rules or do anything of the sort.

 

[tompy97]

that's stealing in my books, I'd give then a warning abd ban if it happens again

 

[eric167]

its definatly stealing.
setting up a quarry bascially sets up ownership of everything below it.
i could forgive someone caving below it if they didnt know it was there, but not someone deliberatly setting up in the hole removing stuff prior to the quarry.

 

[DoctorOr]

Setting up a quarry means you now own a 64x64 area?

At what point is ownership formalized? Setting up the landmarks? When the frame is built? How long can I own land before digging it up? What if I "power" the quarry with a single redstone (or even stirling) engine? Every pass would take literal real life days. Can I tile hundreds of quarries and own it allllll?

Quarries are cheap as hell to be granting this sort of formal "ownership"

 

[iNd3x]

I would warn, and ban next time, as others have said, it isn't clear in the rules, but as omicron says, doing this is intentionally exploiting another player. But due to no rules being made about this, you would have to just give a warning the first time, event though it's annoying as shit, but if they do it a second time, I would simply ban them.

 

[cynric]

Setting up a quarry means you now own a 64x64 area?

At what point is ownership formalized? Setting up the landmarks? When the frame is built? How long can I own land before digging it up? What if I "power" the quarry with a single redstone (or even stirling) engine? Every pass would take literal real life days. Can I tile hundreds of quarries and own it allllll?

Quarries are cheap as hell to be granting this sort of formal "ownership"

Those are all good questions that should probably be answered by the rules on the server. Essentially robbing the quarry owner of the result of his work/mining setup however can't be right, so I would consider it to be against the rules.

 

[namiasdf]

Though it is rather annoying that somebody would do that, there isn't really anything preventing them from doing such a thing.

It's up to the parties to work things out. If the thieving party had intended on hampering the rate to which the quarry owner gets valuable/scarce resources, they may not be the type you'd want on a server that is hosting a community tended game.

I would simply tell them to stop or get out. There is no need for something so foolish. Not only are they wasting the quarry owners time, but your time as well.

I am pretty cut and clean with my justice though.

 

[Enigmius1]

If the server has any rules in place referencing common sense, then the two guys in the quarry would likely be breaking that rule. The guy running the quarry is providing the energy to clear out the trash blocks, saving the guys in the quarry energy or durability on their tools to gather the valuable blocks the quarry exposes. It's just a lame thing to do, and "Well, there's no explicit rule against it" is an equally lame excuse. Warn once, then ban.

 

[Booker The Geek]

Here is an idea to prevent this from happening in the future.

Set up two Mystcraft worlds, one for manual mining and one for automated mining. Then there would not be a problem because if they did that in the quarry world, then it would automatically be considered griefing.

But for today's problem, I would kick/jail for 24 hours and ban if it happens again.

 

[Ps2K]

Rule 1 on my server: Be excellent to each other.

While the action described is technically not stealing or griefing, it is in my opinion not a nice thing to do. I would therefore have a little chat with the players.

 

[BanzaiBlitz]

Just another echo of giving them a warning and clarifying the rules for this particular situation. Further incidents by said players would merit the call of stealing and/or griefing and subsequently deserve a ban.

 

[Omicron]

Rule 1 on my server: Be excellent to each other.

While the action described is technically not stealing or griefing, it is in my opinion not a nice thing to do. I would therefore have a little chat with the players.

This should be the number one rule on all servers!

 

[KirinDave]

Ban anyone who says, "The rules technically say..." These people are toxic. Rules for games are there to be obeyed in spirit.