These guidelines must be followed by ALL members of our community management staff team. This includes Helpers, Moderators, Sr. Mods, and Administrators.

Good Practice

Here are some tips for good practice as a member of the Community team:

• Always include the relevant rule numbers and letters in your punishment message, as well as the ruleset. Example “GDUR rule 3b”.
• If you are in a hurry to get a troublemaker out of chat, you don’t have to make your punishment message thorough. You can always edit it later.
• If your work is taking a toll on your mental state, ask another member of the team to take over for you and take a break once they arrive. This is especially necessary to do if you’re getting angry or excessively irritated.

Things to Avoid

• In Discord, avoid using commands from other bots or through the default UI. All punishments should be done through GS Defender. The only exception is to deal with raiders. When dealing with raiders, get rid of them as quickly as possible.
• In Minecraft, always use Litebans commands unless otherwise specified. Litebans are the ONLY punishments which affect the entire network. CMI and Vanilla punishments do not.
• Avoid giving “verbal warnings”. When you want to inform someone that their behavior is not acceptable, you should use the warning command. This way it gets logged and they know to take it seriously. Don’t just tell them in chat, unless multiple people are involved in the issue.

Moderator Tools for DISCORD

Run commands using the GS Defender bot to hand out punishments and save moderator notes. Note that GS Defender uses categorization for most moderator actions.  When your mod command requests a “category”, find the one that best fits or “Other” if you can’t find one.  Category is not visible to the recipient of your punishment and is not used for anything internally, so it doesn’t really matter.

• /note [user] [message]
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Save a private note on a user for any member of staff to view at any time. Use this for suspicious but not actionable behavior.
  • Related commands: /remove notes, /edit note, /list notes.
• /warn [user] [category] [message]
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Send a note to the specified user. It is sent to the recipient via direct messages.
  • Use this for first-time, low-severity punishments.
  • Related commands: /remove warnings, /edit warn, /list warnings.
• /mute [user] [category] [message] [duration]
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Puts the specified user in timeout for the specified duration, and sends them the message via direct messages.
  • Use this for second-time or medium-severity punishments.
  • Related commands: /unmute.
• /kick [user] [category] [reason]
  • Permission Level: Moderator
  • Removes the specified member from the server, but they can come back at any time. They are notified via direct messages.
  • Use this for suspicious compromised accounts that aren’t doing anything especially dangerous.
• /ban [user] [category] [reason]
  • Permission Level: Moderator
  • Removes the specified member from the server, and they can’t come back. They are notified via direct messages and receive the appeal link.
  • Use this for repeat offenses or for high severity punishments.
  • Related commands: /unban, /edit ban.
• /purge [amount]
  • Permission Level: Sr. Mod
  • Deletes the specified number of messages in the current chat channel.
  • Useful to get rid of arguments, spam, or chat from raiders.
• /massban [users] [category] [reason]
  • Permission Level: Sr. Mod
  • Bans all the members listed in [users]. If you can afford to spend time waiting before banning a group of raiders, use massban. Otherwise, you can do it faster through the Members tab.
  • Related commands: /massunban.

Moderator Tools for MINECRAFT: Action Commands

• /warn <player> [reason]
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Send a note to the specified user. It is sent to the recipient via direct messages.
  • Use this for first-time, low-severity punishments.
  • Related commands: /unwarn.
• /mute <player> [reason]
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Mutes a player, making them unable to chat.
  • Use this for first-time, low-severity punishments.
  • Helpers are limited to 1-month mutes, whereas moderators and above can permanently mute players.
  • Related commands: /unmute.
• /tempmute <player> <time> [reason]
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Mutes a player temporarily, making them unable to chat until time runs out.
  • Use this for first-time, low-severity punishments.
  • Helpers are limited to 1-month mutes, whereas moderators and above can permanently mute players.
  • Related commands: /unmute.
• /nick <player> off
  • Permission Level: Moderator
  • Removes a player’s set nickname.
  • Use this when they abuse their nickname permissions.
• /ban <player> [reason]
  • Permission Level: Moderator
  • Removes the specified member from the server, and they can’t come back. They are notified via direct messages and receive the appeal link.
  • Use this for repeat offenses or for high severity punishments.
  • Related commands: /unban.
• /tempban <player> <time> [reason]
  • Permission Level: Moderator
  • Removes the specified member from the server, and they can’t come back until the specified time is up. They are notified via direct messages and receive the appeal link.
  • Use this for repeat offenses or for high severity punishments.
  • Related commands: /unban.
• /ipban <player> [reason]
  • Permission Level: Sr. Mod
  • Permanently bans the specified player’s IP from joining the server.
  • Use this ONLY if the specified player has been repeatedly using alts to join the server. IP bans are known to cause issues with people joining from University wifi or with people using a dynamic IP.
  • Related commands: /ipunban
• /cmi mutechat
  • Permission Level: Sr. Mod
  • Disables all chat for up to an hour.
  • Use this during a raid of spam bots.
  • Related commands: /cmi unmutechat
• /cmi clearchat
  • Permission Level: Sr. Mod
  • Clears the current chat.
  • Use this if someone bypasses any chat filter or to get rid of arguments.

Moderator Tools for Minecraft: Utility Commands

• /spectate [player]
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Vanish yourself and enter spectator mode. If a player was specified, you also teleport to that player.
  • Use this to watch a player who is tripping the anticheat, or who earned advancements such as “Diamonds” suspiciously early. Basically, use this to watch someone’s gameplay.
  • When you finish spectating, you teleport back to the original position.
  • Related commands: /unspectate
• /co inspect
  • Permission Level: Helper
  • Toggle inspection mode. While in inspection mode, click on blocks to see who interacted with them.
  • Use this when someone is accused of griefing or when someone builds an inappropriate structure.
• /co lookup [action:] [include:] [exclude:] [radius:] [time:] [user:]
  • Permission Level: Moderator
  • Lookup nearby actions with the specified parameters, similar to co inspect. This command is slightly tricky to use at first, but it is completely safe if you misuse it, so feel free to experiment as you get it right.
• /co rollback [action:] [include:] [exclude:] [radius:] [time:] [user:]
  • Permission Level: Sr. Mod
  • Use this to undo any griefing that may have been done. This command is potentially dangerous, so make sure you know your way around co lookup BEFORE using this for the first time.
  • If there is any doubt about how it works your first time, ask an Administrator for help, or try it out on a beta server.
• /vanish
  • Permission Level: Sr. Mod (on some servers, moderators also have access)
    Become completely invisible and unable to interact with the server. Players will not see you on the tablist.
  • Use the command again to exit vanish mode.

Moderator Tools for Steam

Hover over comments or posts in the Steam Group to perform moderator actions.

• Delete – Removes a comment.
• Report – Hides a comment and reports it to steam.
• Ban – Removes a user from the group, they can’t rejoin.  Also allows you to purge all messages from a user.  Requires the Senior Moderator role or higher (the Officer rank in the Steam Group).

Severity

Many scenarios will be rated by their severity and given an example first-time punishment. If you did not give a user any other punishment when they broke a rule, warn them. Delete any messages that break the rules. Delete entire conversations if you have to. Review the rules here: https://gamerdorks.net/rules

GDUR Rule 1: Support

• If someone is sharing their own passwords, multifactor authentication keys, or personally identifiable information, delete the message.
• If someone submits a blank report, warn them and mark it as resolved.
• If someone submits a false report to harm the reputation of another user, give the false reporter the same punishment that you would have given the other user, had the report been true.
• If someone makes a complaint or report in chat, handle it and warn them for contacting us incorrectly.
• Ignore direct message reports.

GDUR Rule 2: Respect

• General harassment or bullying should result in a 1-hour mute.
• Persistent, high effort, or extreme harassment should result in a permanent mute.
• Intentional discrimination should result in a permanent ban. This includes use of slurs, saying anything overtly hateful, or intentional misgendering / deadnaming.
• Non-intentional discrimination should result in the rulebreaker being warned and shown the Inclusivity Statement page on our website. This includes unintentional misgendering, saying common phrases that result from a background of unintentional discrimination such as “men don’t cry”, “being gay is a sin”, or “I don’t believe in pronouns”.
• If someone shares personally identifiable information about someone else, or encourages them to share their own personal information, give them a 1-week mute. Second offense should be a permanent ban.
• If someone excuses breaking the rules by saying “it’s just a joke”, warn them.
• If someone pushes the boundaries of others by interacting with them in a way they don’t want to be interacted with, mute the perpetrator.
• If someone encourages others to break the rules, not knowing it’s not allowed, warn everyone involved.
  • If they do know it’s not allowed, permanently ban the instigator and warn everyone else involved.
• Threats of any sort, such as threatening to revealing someone’s personal information, threatening real-world harm, or threatening digital attacks, should result in a permanent ban.

GDUR Rule 3: Content

• NSFW (sexual / gore) images should result in a permanent ban. Includes shock content.
• Topics regarding the use or abuse of substances should result in a 5-minute mute.
• Political or religious discussions should result in a warning. If it becomes an argument, give 1-hour mutes to everyone involved. This also includes content regarding laws and borders.
• Burning or desecration of knowledge or symbols should result in a permanent ban.
• Glorifying fascism should result in a permanent ban. This includes glorifying figures such as Hitler, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin.
• Self-harm topics should result in a 1-hour mute. We are not required to deal with such topics, and in some countries it may even be illegal.
• Abuse topics should result in a 1-hour mute.
• Jokes about tragedies (i.e. 9/11) should result in a warning. If it seems particularly inflammatory, also give them a 1-hour mute.
• Jokes about human rights violations (i.e. the holocaust) should result in a permanent ban.
• Non-sexual nudity images should result in a warning and post deletion. Second-time offenses should result in a permanent ban.
• NSFW text posts should result in a 1-hour mute, this includes innuendo and jokes.
• Overt, gross attempts at E-dating should be met with a permanent ban. Less overt attempts such as “who here is single” should result in a warning.
• NSFW roleplay or user-generated content should result in a permanent ban.
• Illegal activity should result in a permanent ban. When determining if something is illegal, reference United States federal law. Work with the team to take necessary steps to report it to law enforcement.

GDUR Rule 4: Proper Conduct

• Speaking the incorrect language in a public channel (including made-up languages like Pig Latin) should result in a warning.
• Repeated messages should result in a 5-minute mute.
• Repeated chat flood should result in a permanent mute.
• Single instances of ascii art in Discord (such as the “this is bob” skeleton art) should result in a warning.
• Trolling should result in a permanent mute.
• Advertisements immediately upon joining one of our services should result in a permanent ban. If it’s an Affiliate, request an Administrator instead.
• Advertisements as a long-time member of our services should result in a warning. If it’s an Affiliate, request an Administrator instead.
• Excessive misuse of Discord channels should result in a warning.
• Excessively talking over others in voicechat should result in a warning. 
• Playing music or loud repetitive noises in voicechat should result in a voicechat mute, if possible. Otherwise, a normal 1-hour mute should suffice.
• If someone has a lot of background noise, ask them to turn on push-to-talk. If they refuse, treat it as loud repetitive noises.
• Impersonation should result in a warning. If they are using it to manipulate others, give them a permanent ban.

GDUR Rule 5: Platform Guidelines

• Encouraging others to cheat or pirate should result in a 1-hour mute.
• Sharing cheat or pirated software should result in a permanent ban. 
• Encouraging others to or bragging about breaking the rules of other services or communities should result in a 1-hour mute.
• Failing to follow Discord terms of service in the Discord server should result in a permanent ban. This includes being under the minimum age limit.
• Failing to follow Minecraft EULA in the Minecraft server should result in a permanent ban.

GDUR Rule 6: Staff Interaction

• If a staff member breaks the rules, immediately report it with a Contact Management ticket, or by emailing contact@gamerdorks.net if Discord is unavailable.
• Calling out a staff member publicly for any type of abuse should result in a warning.
• Ignoring or insulting staff should result in increased punishment. Whatever punishment they would have received, make it more severe.
• People who worship staff members should be given a warning. This includes things like begging to be friends with staff because they are staff, or giving staff unnecessary praise because they are staff. If it makes you uncomfortable, this rule likely applies.
• Use of loopholes should result in increased punishment.
• Minimodding should result in a 5-minute mute.
• Failure to report major issues should result in a warning.

GDUR Rule 7: Child Safety

• Underage participants of our services should be banned. If you know their age, ban them for until they are old enough.
  • Discord’s age requirement is 13 years old.
  • Users under 13 on Minecraft should be muted, not banned.
• If someone is acting generally creepy toward children, permanently ban them.
• If someone is proven to be predatory toward children and there is solid evidence, permanently ban them and report them to the local or national authorities if possible.
• If a child shares inappropriate content of themself, permanently ban them.

GDUR Rule 8: Exceptions

• See “Staff Interaction” for how loopholes will be handled.
• If someone does “extreme behavior” on another platform, and you can prove a link between their user on that platform and on the Gamer Dorks platform, permanently ban them. The following activities are considered extreme behavior:
  • Intentional Bigotry
  • Violent Extremism
  • Threats
  • Illegal Activity
  • Harassment
• Treat behavior on our Affiliate Communities or Affiliate Creators the same way you would on one of our services.

MRP Rule 1: Parental Guidance

• Users under 13 in Minecraft should be muted until they are old enough to use chat.
• Users under 13 who have no parental guidance should be banned until they are 13.

MRP Rule 2: User-Generated Content

• Building hate symbols or detailed NSFW structures should result in a permanent ban.
• Building non-detailed NSFW structures (such as the “upside-down T”) should result in a 3-day ban.
• Inappropriate skins of any type should result in a permanent ban.
• Treat any rules broken on signs, books, and holograms as if they broke those rules in chat.
• Treat any mild language on signs as if it is bypassing a chat filter.

MRP Rule 3: Clients and Mods

• Spectate anyone who fails Vulcan checks. If they appear to be cheating, give them a 3-day ban.
• Spectate anyone who seems to be getting too rich too fast. If they appear to be x-raying, give them a 3-day ban.
• Warn anyone who uses prohibited mods in PVP modes.
• If someone is failing anticheat checks but is not breaking any rules, request that they switch to vanilla or the official modpack.
  • If someone is still failing anticheat checks after switching to one of these, report it as a bug.

MRP Rule 4: Exploits

• Intentional duplication should result in a 3-day ban.
• If someone abuses a bug repeatedly and does NOT report it, give them a 3-day ban.
• If someone abuses a bug repeatedly and reports it, give them a 1-day ban.
• If someone finds a bug, does not continue using it, and reports it, thank them.
• Pie-ray should result in a warning.

MRP Rule 5: Automation

• If someone uses macro or autoclickers to gain a combat advantage, give them a warning.
• Building intentional lag machines should result in a permanent ban.
• Building unintentional lag machines (such as laggy mob farms) should result in the machine being deactivated. If they are reactivated without being fixed, delete them entirely.
• Using creative exploits to lag or crash users should result in a permanent ban.

MRP Rule 6: Your Accounts

• Account sharing should result in a warning. Second offense should be a permanent ban. This also applies to account borrowing software or account trading.
• Using more than 5 alt accounts at a time should result each account being kicked.
• Punishment evasion should result in a permanent ban.

MRP Rule 7: Real Money Transactions

• Player-to-player real-money transactions should result in a permanent ban.
• Calling our server pay-to-win should result in a 5-minute mute and ask them to address their complaint in a ticket or email. If they ignore it, permanently mute them.

MRP Rule 8: Survival-Specific Rules

• People who beg for items should be treated as spammers. See GDUR Rule 4a.
• Shops that give end-game items to new players for prices that are too easily accessible should result in a warning.
• Misleading new players should result in a warning.
• Griefing in survival should result in a 3-day ban.
  • Griefing in survival within claims also be rolled back using CoreProtect. This is not necessary outside of claims.
• Theft in survival should result in a 3-day ban.
• Bypassing PvP toggle should result in a 3-day ban, if the victim complains or reports it.
• Teleport traps should result in a 3-day ban.

MRP Rule 9: Hardcore-Specific Rules

MRP Rule 10: Creative-Specific Rules

• Griefing in creative should result in a permanent ban. This includes any action to lag or crash players or the server.

MRP Rule 11: UHC-Specific Rules

• Using disallowed client mods should result in a warning.

MRP Rule 12: Skirmish & Siege Specific Rules

• Using disallowed client mods should result in a warning.
• Cross-teaming should result in a 3-day ban.
• Refusing to play should result in a 3-day ban.
• Leaving three or more competitive games early without rejoining in under 1 minute will result in a seasonal competitive ban, preventing that user from playing competitive for the rest of the season.

Intent

• Bad intent is punishable.
• If a user appears to have joined any of our services with the sole purpose of breaking rules, ban them.
• If a user is intentionally breaking the rules because they think they can get away with something once before having a permanent punishment, prove them wrong. Use increased punishment.
• If a user is causing trouble and not strictly going against the rules, and using this as a shield, call an Administrator or Manager. These highher staff can moderate outside the rules when necessary, and will deal with this user.

Target

• Retaliating to a rulebreaker in a way that breaks the rules is punishable, but always give them a smaller punishment than you give the instigator.
• If a rulebreaker seems to be targeting a specific person because of a vulnerability, this can be classified as discrimination and you consider it a high-severity infraction.

History

• If someone breaks the rules multiple times, consider it higher severity.
• Regulars or long-time members of the server should be given more leniency.
• Before banning a regular, discuss with the moderator team.
• If someone has misbehaved on one platform (i.e. Discord) and got banned, then is misbehaving on the other platform (i.e. Minecraft), consider it higher severity.

Respect

• Only the rulebreaker, the staff team, and anyone negatively affected by them needs to know when action is taken.
• Inform the rulebreaker when they have been moderated and why.
• Let the rulebreaker know how they can appeal permanent bans.  If you banned with GS Defender on Discord, or with any of our in-game tools, they will be notified of this automatically.

Probable Cause

• If someone reports a rulebreak with no evidence, briefly investigate it, but do not immediately take their word as fact.
• Vulcan anti-cheat can sometimes be wrong about cheaters, so don’t ban someone the first time they get kicked by the anti-cheat unless you saw them cheat.
• Solid evidence is required for moderating regulars or long-time members.

Logging

• You are required to log any mute or ban that lasts longer than 1 day.
  • Please log other punishments as well when possible.
  • You are not required to log punishments on members that first joined the service within the last 15 minutes.
  • Any punishment that does not have a valid log can be appealed and immediately accepted because there is no valid evidence to the contrary. This includes punishments the two above exceptions.
• Log any punishment where you think the next one should result in a permanent ban. (i.e. if you administered a Final Warning).
• The log format is available in the pinned messages in #⁠modlogs.

Web Pages

• If you’re interested in helping with blogging or creating pages on our Website, ask in the #website channel.
• When creating webpages, save them for review by a Senior Moderator or an Administrator.  Do not publish pages without permission.

Event Hosting

• When hosting an event, create the event on the Website, on the Steam Group, and on the Discord Server.
• It can be announced in the Discord server in #upcoming-events.  If you do not have permission to use that channel, a higher member of staff does.
• Senior Moderators and above can ping everyone and all roles, so if you need one of them to ping a role, feel free to ask.
• Make sure that there is interest for your event and that enough people will be interested in attending.  Ideally, very few of our hosted events should end up as a failure.
• Less is more.  Hosting events too often may get people tired of attending events here.

Social Media Management

• If you’re interested in helping with social media management, ask in the #social channel.
• When creating posts, save them for review by a Senior Moderator or an Administrator.  Do not publish posts or videos without permission.

Wiki Management

• If you’re interested in helping with wiki management, ask in the #wiki channel.
• You may make your own edits, and approve edits made by other members of the community.  However, when you do so, make sure to let us know so that we can make sure it’s being done properly.

Activity Metrics

• Members of the Community Management team are expected to be active in our Discord server, and to be active in some of our other communities, such as our steam group or our games or game servers.  They are expected to log their punishments, and will be evaluated partially upon the number of logs they make.