Eagleworld.net Minecraft Blog More Minecraft than ever before!

31Dec/100

Griefing Report – Liam’s Church and TIN’s Club

Posted by EagleRock

Hello, everyone.

One of the not-fun parts of administrating a server is handling unruly members and performing the inevitable banning. In Minecraft, of course, griefing is a huge issue, and as was expected, my server was hit as well. There were two buildings griefed on New Years Eve 2010: TIN's Club in Homeless Hill and Liam's Church in Tundra. I had to spend a good 5-6 hours performing investigations and following up on the matter.

Since I like to run a server in as fair of a manner as I can, here are the detailed findings from my
research into these matters, as well as the aftermath of the investigation.

 

Liam's Church

Liam reported that his church had a pool of lava on the main level. As a result all of the wooden
pews he had were destroyed. While the griefing was severe, Liam stated it was not as a result of a
joke or any kind of prank he knew of, therefore the nature behind the attack was purely for griefing.

Liam had already cleaned up the lava by the time I inspected the church. However, he was able to
show me the location of two lava blocks to the best of his recollection. I placed signs on the two
blocks to get a reading of the coordinates. Here is the log entries for the two signs I placed:

2010-12-31 14:53:46 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -448 70 -815
2010-12-31 14:53:47 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -448 70 -816

Brief persual of the logs showed that Toasty9896 was the one that placed the two lava in question.
While the coordinates were not exact to the ones Liam provided, they were within 1-2 blocks, and still within the church:

2010-12-31 03:03:52 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-448 Y=71 Z=-817
2010-12-31 03:03:52 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Toasty9896 used a lava bucket (10)
2010-12-31 03:03:54 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-448 Y=71 Z=-818
2010-12-31 03:03:54 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Toasty9896 used a lava bucket (11)

Verdict on Liam's Church: There is very strong evidence that Toasty9896 was the culprit.
Toasty's member rights were revoked immediately. All items on his person were removed permanently.  Toasty was granted the ability to defend himself to me and explain his actions. However, according to Runninghobo, Toasty stated he was leaving the server and did not deny the actions. He said he did not wish to return to the Minecraft server. Therefore, he is guilty as charged. Toasty was permabanned.

 

TIN's Club

The club was destroyed, presumably by lava or fire, since it was constructed primarily of wood.
Besides the obvious destruction of the building, there were two random blocks placed on the house, which were presumably placed to stop the flow of lava. Below is the log file output that shows where the two blocks are located:

Dirt Block Location:

2010-12-31 15:16:11 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -716 102 -354
2010-12-31 15:16:11 [INFO] Line 2 : Dirt Block
2010-12-31 15:16:11 [INFO] Line 3 : Placed Here

Cobblestone Block Location:

2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -709 102 -352
2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Line 2 : Cobblestone
2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Line 3 : Block
2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Line 4 : Placed Here

After investigating the GriefAlert logs for any kind of lava or flint and steel use in the area, I
found two lava buckets dropped by Hoolabaloo as indicated by the log entries below:

2010-12-31 03:47:27 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-725 Y=109 Z=-346
2010-12-31 03:47:27 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a lava bucket (10)
2010-12-31 03:47:29 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-725 Y=109 Z=-346
2010-12-31 03:47:29 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a bucket (11)
2010-12-31 03:47:51 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-713 Y=98 Z=-351
2010-12-31 03:47:51 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a lava bucket (12)
2010-12-31 03:47:55 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-715 Y=98 Z=-355
2010-12-31 03:47:55 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a bucket (13)

The next step of the investigation was to find out where the lava was placed. Since the empty
bucket was used 2-4 seconds after the lava was placed, that indicated that the lava had enough time to start flowing, but would have removed evidence of the source. However, placement was important to determine whether or not it appeared to be accidental or intentional.

I found the first spot, which was on the road overlooking TIN's Club. Based on the placement, it
is completely possible the lava was an accident:

2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -725 109 -346
2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Line 1 : Hoolabaloo
2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Line 2 : Exact Location
2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Line 3 : #1

However, the second lava was dropped on the spot in front of TIN's door. Since it was the second
lava bucked used in short time, the likelihood that this was an accident is very slim. Here's the
log proof that I found the spot:

2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -715 98 -349
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 1 : This is the
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 2 : spot two
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 3 : steps in front
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 4 : of Tin's door.

Verdict on TIN's House: Strong evidence shows Hoolabaloo was the culprit. Hoolabaloo's
member rights were revoked immediately. All items on his person were removed permanently. Hoolabaloo was granted the ability to defend himself to me and explain his actions. However, Hoolabaloo refused to speak to me regarding the matter. Therefore, he is found guilty as charged. Hoolabaloo was permabanned.

 

Aftermath

This was not a fun day for me or anyone else of the server. I did not enjoy banning either of these
two members, but the rules of the server are plain and simple, and they did in fact damage people's work. In response to this attack, I felt the need to restrict lava, flint and steel, and TNT to only VIP members, Mods, and Admins. That way, these destructive tools are in the hands of only a select few that are deemed trustworthy enough.

I don't like restricting items from people, as I wish for the server to be as open as possible.
However, I do not wish to see this occur again, as I am sure nobody else wishes it to as well.

Filed under: Griefing No Comments