[.ThatsDope42O]

I was banned on smp.hometown.mc

My username is .ThatsDope42O

What it says when i try to join is: You have been banned from this server. Reason: grief. Banned by LyingStar. Appeal your ban at http://www.hometownmc.com/forums

Who banned me: LyingStar

Why i should be unbanned? Ive been informed by an irl friend who is also on the server that the reason for the grief ban was because i destroyed emerald block/beacons in the nether, i agree thats a good reason for a ban, however that beacon/emerald was way out far away from the resnether spawn, i thought i belonged to an old inactive player who was mining netherite at some point, and as far as i was aware everything i wasnt allowed to break would be either protected or claimed, if i am unbanned i will not break any prebuilt things without finding out if i can, also i will go back to the nether and replace the beacon and emerald blocks myself, i still have the blocks, i promise you i did not know what i was doing was wrong, and i will not let it happen again, all i ask for is another chance. I will right my wrong.

Why I want to be unbanned: I enjoy my time on this server alot, and have already commited alot of time out of my personal life to it, since ive been on the server (about 5 days or something) id estimate ive spent about 65 hours or something playing, i like the community of the server and would like to continue being a part of it as well as continuing the progress ive made in the hours i cannot get back.

Thanks for taking the time to read my Appeal - .ThatsDope42O

[Nether_Ruler]

.ThatsDope42O Wrote:I was banned on smp.hometown.mc

My username is .ThatsDope42O

What it says when i try to join is: You have been banned from this server. Reason: grief. Banned by LyingStar. Appeal your ban at http://www.hometownmc.com/forums

Who banned me: LyingStar

Why i should be unbanned? Ive been informed by an irl friend who is also on the server that the reason for the grief ban was because i destroyed emerald block/beacons in the nether, i agree thats a good reason for a ban, however that beacon/emerald was way out far away from the resnether spawn, i thought i belonged to an old inactive player who was mining netherite at some point, and as far as i was aware everything i wasnt allowed to break would be either protected or claimed, if i am unbanned i will not break any prebuilt things without finding out if i can, also i will go back to the nether and replace the beacon and emerald blocks myself, i still have the blocks, i promise you i did not know what i was doing was wrong, and i will not let it happen again, all i ask for is another chance. I will right my wrong.

Why I want to be unbanned: I enjoy my time on this server alot, and have already commited alot of time out of my personal life to it, since ive been on the server (about 5 days or something) id estimate ive spent about 65 hours or something playing, i like the community of the server and would like to continue being a part of it as well as continuing the progress ive made in the hours i cannot get back.

Thanks for taking the time to read my Appeal - .ThatsDope42O

Before I formally begin I would like to point out that I don't particularly appreciate your resistance to this process. One of the reasons we don't discuss bans with other players is so that this exact thing doesn't happen, where you get told what you did wrong and you apologize for what you were told. I'm partially glad you omitted some of it though, as it highlights the reason why we tell players we don't discuss bans. For your ease and mine, I tend to color-code my responses. The red highlight of your appeal corresponds with the red highlight in my response, blue with blue, and green with green. I'm telling you this not because I think you lack the intellect to figure that out, but because I like to leave as minimal questions as possible when replying. I know this reply is long, and I know it seems daunting. This isn't something personal, but like I just said, I like to leave as minimal questions as possible.

Now,
No. This isn't the case at all. The beacon you griefed is right at the spawn for resnether, not 10 blocks from where you warp. You went around the side and broke into it a bit, removing some of the basalt that surrounds the beacon, shown below. As you can see I rolled back the area 15 hours, 20 blocks from where my player is placed, restoring the basalt you broke. Below the screenshot of the rollback is a screenshot of the resnether spawn. Players warp in at the yellow circle and the beacons you took are circled in pink.




Now, in anticipation of the argument that you somehow got lost and found your way back to spawn without realizing it, I decided to look into that and rule that out as a possibility. After looking into the server logs and comparing it to when you broke the beacon, I found that you joined the server slightly past midnight EST (12:02:59 if you want to be pedantic). Between then and 4:48 AM EST you did not join or leave the game (if you care to corroborate this, check #server-chat in the discord).


Why am I telling you this?
You warped to resnether a total of two times. Once at 4:05 AM EST and then again at 4:09 AM EST. Below is the screenshot of when you broke the beacon at the resnether spawn. You'll see that the timestamp on it places it 12 hours before the time of the screenshot, which is timestamp at 4:15 PM EST. 4:15 AM EST is also when you left resnether and went to your home at /warp Salmy, which is where you placed the emerald blocks in a chest and the beacons in your ender chest (albeit at a later time). So tell me, how could you possibly make the case that you thought the beacon was far out from the resnether spawn when there was a total of 6 minutes between your first warp to resnether and the time you broke the beacon? It took you approximately 2 minutes to mine down the entire beacon, so that leaves a total of 4 minutes when you could've possibly run around as fast as you could and gotten lost. That's not something I believe, and I don't appreciate the deceit.


Moving on,
Regardless of where you find a build, the general thing you should keep in mind is this very quote: if it is not yours, and you don't have explicit permission to touch it, don't. Just because something is not claimed does not permit you to take it. Our 'No grief' rule means exactly what it says: no grief. The rule does not state "grief is allowed only if a build is not claimed," nor does it say "grief is allowed if you think someone is inactive and accidentally left a beacon." No grief extends past gold shovel claims. Gold shovel claims are there as extra protection, and the absence of one does not permit someone to break the building. 

Now, one final thing, something you didn't mention, but I did.
Something you conveniently left out of your appeal (perhaps because it wasn't listed when Frost told your friend why you were banned) is the beacon you stole from an old build. Below you'll find a screenshot of the incident I'm referencing.


Along with taking this player's beacon, you also for whatever reason broke an oak fence that they had right next to their house, releasing cows that they had stored in there, along with some dirt right next to their house. Screenshots of this are attached below. The fence and the dirt respectively. 



So, with all that being said, I have a few questions. I'm not harshing on you, these are just standard for bans when any given staff member isn't completely satisfied with a player's original appeal. I could've been satisfied if you didn't lie to me and go out of your way to try and spin the situation, but alas, you did, so here we are.
1. Do you understand why we have players appeal and not be told why they were banned?
2. If not to try and sweep it under the rug, why did you only own up to what Frost told your friend you got banned for in your appeal? 
3. Why try and lie about the resnether incident and how it happened? We both know that you didn't get lost in resnether, and I'm hard-pressed to believe that you didn't know the beacon was at resnether spawn. (Looking for a detailed response to this one)
4. Why don't we allow players to grief?
5. Do you understand the griefing rules now? What are they?

[.ThatsDope42O]

Answers to the questions listed:
1. My understanding of why there are player appeals is to see if players will admit there wrongs, the reason i was resistant is because when i wasnt told the reason it seemed unfair to me, and i hadnt ever even looked at the ban appeal forums before now so i knew nothing about the process, now that i have i realize the reason.
2. The reason i didnt mention the old build was because, as i stated before, i did not fully understand the rule of not destroying things even if they are unclaimed, and thought it was an inactive players old base so i didnt think i was breaking any rules on that. I thought i could just take the beacon for free, along with whatever else was there, i broke the dirt in an attempt to make the chest break and reveal its contents, and i freed the cows because i felt bad for them being locked in a fence.
3. It wasnt my intent to lie about it, from what i recall i was in resnether looking for netherite and had warped to resnether southwest and when i was digging (i dont remember it being near spawn, but my memory seems to be wrong in this case)
i found emerald blocks, and wanted them to sell, i didnt even realize it was a part of a beacon at first because i came across the emerald blocks while slightly under the surface of the spawn first, then the beacon. the reason i assumed it was from an old inactive player mining netherite was because i didnt think there would be a beacon at the southwest resnether warp, only the main one, and as i said before i didnt understand the rules on griefing fully, it was also wrong of me to assume it was from an inactive old player, my thinking on that was the nether had been stripped of its resources long before i went there, so it must have been an old inactive player, however i was wrong as it belonged to the community. now after seeing your reply, im unsure if i even was at southwest as i am now questioning how i remember it and honestly cant fully remember how it all went down, i just know i found the emerald blocks before the beacon and with the excitement of possibly making in game money i mined it, i should have thought through what i was doing and asked one of the staff who was online at the time about it.
4. the reason you dont allow people to grief is because it makes the game not fun, having to constantly worry about your hard work being destroyed and losing the time spent on your work, also its just wrong from a moral standpoint.
5. The rules on griefing are that you cannot break any player made structure, claimed or not, if it does not belong to you. No exceptions.

Again id like to thank you for giving me a chance to appeal, and if i am unbanned i will go back to both locations and rebuild what was destroyed myself, ill even sell some diamonds in /warp shop so i can get cow spawn eggs and replace the cows. and i wont let this happen again, i was definently in the wrong here and do not want to make the same mistake twice. If i am not unbanned that is fine too, i can accept the consequences for my actions, and will take what ive learned with me into the next server i join. and in the case that i am not unbanned which is honestly what im expecting to happen, id like to request that you take all my stuff and give it to the player whos build i destroyed with the cows. -.ThatsDope42O

[Nether_Ruler]

While I still don't fully buy that you didn't realize you were at spawn, your intentions are something I can't prove, and since it wasn't that much grief, I'll let it go.

I'm going to make this next point very clear because I want you to remember it:
If you did not build something, and you did not get permission from the person who DID build it to touch it, then do not touch it. Emerald blocks do not spawn naturally, nor do beacons, and if you're ever confused if something is naturally generated or not, ask. If there's no one responding to you, Google (or whatever your preferred search engine is) it! If you come across something that you didn't build, just move along.

Next, just for clarity:
The grief rule. Our gold shovel plugin is an added player of protection, but the general rule on the server of "no grief" applies to builds that do not have the gold shovel protection as well. Do not build on other people's property (without permission), and do not touch other people's property (without permission). This applies to player builds, staff builds, and any and all server builds, regardless of whether or not they're claimed.

Final question before I unban you:
Do you a) understand everything I said above in its entirety (please ask questions if you don't, I'm more than happy to elaborate) and b) are you willing to accept harsher consequences should you find yourself in this situation again?

[.ThatsDope42O]

I do fully understand everything that was said, and if i have any questions about rules in the future i will make sure to ask as i do not want to be banned again, and yes i am willing to accept harsher consequences in the future if it happens again.
thank you for giving me a 2nd chance, i promise you i will not dissapoint, and thanks for being reasonable about the situation. also when i log back on i will go back to /spawn and reread every rule and think about them to make sure i fully understand them. - .ThatsDope42O

[Nether_Ruler]

Very well. Out of fairness to appealers past and so I feel you truly understand, you will have a 24-hour temp-ban placed on your account from the time this message is posted (~9:51 PM EST). Once back online, you are to return all of the stolen items to me directly the next time we happen to be online at the same time. 

Welcome back to HomeTown, keep out of trouble. 

Side note: no need to attempt to fix anything you broke. The beacon and the base have both been restored back to their states before you touched them.

[.ThatsDope42O]

Okay, im in central time so for me it will be 7:51 PM ill probably be on around that time or a little later