Server Of The Week

[Casimir]

The server of this week is:
Blocky Survival

Each Friday a server gets randomly elected by votes of the community (that's you). People may then share their experience and explain why that server is so great (or not).

Voting goes like this:

• Everyone posts a comment voting for one server.
• On Friday 12:00 UTC voting is closed.
• We randomly select one comment. Whatever server that comment voted for wins.
• Votes continue to be valid for following elections. Only those comments that voted for the winner get dropped.

Voter is everyone with a forum account and at least 5 meaningful posts in other topics.
Eligible are only public servers (no password). Also servers where the owner objected are out.

The winner then is the "Server Of The Week", which means it gets special attention, a place on the wall of fame and we will meet there on the weekend or the rest of the week.

Wall of fame:

• 27.11.2020 Blocky Survival
• 20.11.2020 Tech Age Survival
• 13.11.2020 |V|V| maikerumine's madness: extreme survival minetest city part 2

Original post:

Spoiler

What about we meet up at a some server each month? (Or week, but that would spoil the acronym.) Each time a different server, voted for by the community.

Servers are the heart of minetest, as they show all the different things one can do with the engine.

The idea is to bring the community together, give insights of what is possible to create and promote lesser known but interesting servers.

Spoiler

There have been claims and discussions that "the core developers don't really play the game" or "they don't engage with the community". I therefor want to especially invite developers to join in and participate.

So here is how it works. We use the cutting edge of modern voting technology:

• Everyone posts a comment voting for one server.
• At a predetermined time (let's say every Friday 12:00 UTC) voting is closed.
• We randomly¹ select one comment. Whatever server that comment voted for wins.
• Over the rest of the weekend we meet on that server.

By randomly picking a comment we make sure we proportionally represent all players, not just one majority. But because several people can vote for the same server, popular servers have a better chance.

Of course it is required that the server can take the load. (However many additional players that will be. Maybe 2, maybe 3.)
We also stay away from a server when the owner objects to the event.

¹ To make the randomness verifiable we could use the pseudo random function and input the last commit hash in MT as seed.

[Sokomine]

Sounds like a nice idea as long as it's not too many people. Also, monthly events are a bit rare. People may forget about the existence of the thread in the meantime.

Any server winning the event may quite likely receive a lot more players than those that joined directly thanks to the event; There's hardly anything that's more attractive to players than other players in large numbers.

A few players joining beforehand and checking out how the server works in general might also help. They could explain to other participants what's diffrent on that server and how to get around, maybe scout out intresting parts, prepare a building suite. Youtubers might also be intrested.

Only problem..it's so hard to suggest a particular server because there are so many great ones out there that deserve beeing visited!

[Andrey01]

The idea is really cool and interesting. Let`s start?

I vote for Tunnelers` Abyss!

[Casimir]

Sounds like a nice idea as long as it's not too many people. Also, monthly events are a bit rare. People may forget about the existence of the thread in the meantime.

Then it might be better to make it a "server of the week".

i vote for 3xile

[joe7575]

Two questions:
1) Can someone vote for his/her own server?
2) Does it make sense to vote for servers that are already heavily used (in the top 30)?

[Casimir]

1) Yes
2) Yes

[joe7575]

Ok, I vote for the Tech Age Survival server :-)

[Festus1965]

lol,
as another kind of this voting fail hard,
just think about how many server users are really also in this forum ... shit happens always again ...
but you can do it, do not mind ... but do not complain later !

[FrostRanger]

Nice idea, although might I suggest that once a server has been voted server of the week/month, a certain amount of time has to pass before they can win again. That way, a variety of servers get featured.

As tempting as it is for me to nominate my own server (which is very much worth visiting if you like hardcore), I am going to have to nominate the server that got me hooked on playing Minetest multiplayer, Blocky Survival. It has a nice modset, a friendly community and there's usually something interesting going on.

[Sokomine]

as another kind of this voting fail hard,
just think about how many server users are really also in this forum ... shit happens always again ...

I don't think that will be a problem here. If many players vote for a particular server - fine, that server may get its visitation earlier. But once it got visited, it ought not to be choosen too quickly again (say, no sooner than two years apart), no matter how many votes there are.

[Edit] Hmpf. FrostRanger ninja'd me :-)

[maikerumine]

I vote for:
|V|V| maikerumine's madness: extreme survival minetest city part 2
server_description = Extreme survival revival? Default with custom mods, Super weapons, Armor, and ALL STONE WORLD!. NO Villages or Roads. Map started in MT 0.4.9. All stone survival world. Some trees will spawn in the outerlands. Craft a newspaper with a gold ingot. Using Sfans build: minetest-5.1.0-ea9b241-win64

port = 30000
address = esmine.net

Because it is rather unique, but needs more players to be really fun. :)

[Festus1965]

Of course it is required that the server can take the load. (However many additional players that will be. Maybe 2, maybe 3.)
We also stay away from a server when the owner objects to the event.

here it is ...
The Fun: the popular Server can take it will none vote (as they are not in forum), the server of the forum might have problem to take it, haha

Problem one: no problem I will vote for those servers missing,
two : that will be fun (will result in max gamer for real, and maybe the owner can readjust the max setting after)

ME now : no vote ... I am looking forward when servers are flooded every weekend

[Celine]

mhh
once a month: at 300 about server, mean after 25 years same could be visited
or if one weekend, still mean next visit after 5,6 years

what protocols ? as only 4.x or 5.x gamer might not visit others

is it garanted that builds we do there (maybe voters together in kind of area, village) are still there at next visit after 25 or 5 years ?
if not, for what go there anyway ? - as example server 521 delete all protection after 1 year or less without login..

[BuckarooBanzay]

Ok, I vote for the Tech Age Survival server :-)

+1 for that one

[Festus1965]

There is a Post missing from my daughter, she had good question:

* as 300 server every month one mean 25 years for revisit the same
or every weekend another just 5,5 years for repeating

* and for that, is it just visiting, looking around ? - or build something as memory been there
and so how long would that builds, areas granted that exit when come again after 25 or 5.5 years haha

-> the only thing sure might stay is map generating ...

... but if only choose from voted, maybe we will revisit earlier ...

[Casimir]

as another kind of this voting fail hard,

You may link to it, then I could take a look, analyse why it failed and change the rules to avoid the same pitfalls.

¹ To make the randomness verifiable we could use the pseudo random function and input the last commit hash in MT as seed.

I'm glad I wrote this in advance.

Now to the important part. It's Friday and here are the votes:

1. Andrey01 - Tunnelers' Abyss
2. Casimir - 3xile
3. joe7575 - Tech Age Survival
4. FrostRanger - Blocky Survival
5. maikerumine - extreme survival minetest city part 2
6. BuckarooBanzay - Tech Age Survival

This is the code I used. Using the latest MT commit as seed.

Code: Select all

-- Seed is header of last commit to minetest engine.
local seed = tonumber("ad58ece18062d4c545432b45d71ce6dbe841746b", 16)
-- Number of votes cast
local votes = 6

local pr = PcgRandom(seed)
local number = pr:next(1, votes)

print("Server of the week is whatever comment number "..number.." voted for!")

And this returns "Server of the week is whatever comment number 2 voted for!"

Therefor the fist server of the week is:

3xile voted for by Casim... oh wait.

This will be closed on 14/11/2020

Use this game in Singleplayer if you like it. It is a nice game btw.
Do not expect here any progress or development. This is running for two months now
and it still have the most of the bugs it had when I started it. This not going to work
like this.

Well, that's sad. But does that mean I can choose another server by my liking? Well no, I will just roll the dice again.

New code:

Code: Select all

-- Seed is header of last commit to minetest engine.
local seed = tonumber("ad58ece18062d4c545432b45d71ce6dbe841746b", 16)
-- Increase iteration to return a different result. 0 is default.
local iteration = 1
-- Number of votes cast
local votes = 6

local number = 0
for _ = 0, iteration, 1 do
	local pr = PcgRandom(seed)
	number = pr:next(1, votes)
	seed = pr:next()
end

print("Server Of The Week is whatever comment number "..number.." voted for!")

And, finally (democracy is hard work) this returns "Server of the week is whatever comment number 5 voted for!"

Therefor the fist server of the week is:

|V|V| maikerumine's madness: extreme survival minetest city part 2
voted for by maikerumine, run by maikerumine.

I can't say much about this server other than that it has a long name. But apparently this is where all the cool people are.

[Festus1965]

as another kind of this voting fail hard,

You may link to it, then I could take a look, analyse why it failed and change the rules to avoid the same pitfalls.

The SAMMY AWARDS as depending on votes, and voters are registered in forum, and most gamer are not ... so a admin just keep advertising (forcing) for the own gamer to register and vote and we would have no change against like Multicraft mass.

... so |V|V| maikerumine's madness: extreme survival minetest city part 2 this weekend, or during this week ending next Friday or how ?

Some impressions back report first getting in mind when in ?
* load good, ping 275
* walking 6.000 nodes on rail to north and no any DIRT !!! ... so no grass, fruit, ...
= added: survival isn't my game, then I go CS:GO or UrbanTerror

... wait for next choice ..

[joe7575]

With /info

[Casimir]

The SAMMY AWARDS as depending on votes, and voters are registered in forum, and most gamer are not ... so a admin just keep advertising (forcing) for the own gamer to register and vote and we would have no change against like Multicraft mass.

In most cases people use a bad or the wrong voting system and then get frustrated when the results turn out bad and conclude that voting does not work. (Literally, the most commonly used voting system (plurality) is also the worst one, and the second most commonly used is the second worst.) Designing voting systems is like engineering. You might build something that resembles a big bird, wonder why it never takes of and conclude that flying is impossible. But it's not, you just have to know how to do it.
We can learn from previous mistakes and change the rules accordingly.

So, I looked into the SAMMY AWARDS.
First, it isn't really clear what voting method is used and how votes will be counted. That's not only bad, it's very bad, because it allows whoever counts the votes to interpret them to their liking.
Second it is stated that nobody can vote for their own server/mod/game, but no way to check this. So honest voters miss out, while dishonest can push their candidates.
Third, nobody ever counted the votes, so I did. Assuming that first vote is 10 points, second vote is 7 points and third vote is 3 points.

Brain Craft: 60
MTG: 43
XaEnvironment: 30
Mineclone 2: 10
Voxelgarden: 10
Farlands: 7
IKEA: 7
Tolkien Test: 7

While the newly registered voters pushed Brain Craft to 60 points, that's only 36% of total points.

If we instead count every vote as full vote then we get this:

Brain Craft: 6
MTG: 5
XaEnvironment: 3
Mineclone 2: 1
Voxelgarden: 1
Farlands: 1
IKEA: 1
Tolkien Test: 1

Brain Craft with 6 votes makes for 32% of votes.

Either way, the voting system used is an odd form of plurality voting.
Plurality voting is also known as First Past The Post and it's the usual "mark one" method most people are familiar with. Voting experts agree that this is the worst voting method there is. And we can see it by the above example. Even if 68% of votes did not go to Brain Craft, it still had "the most votes" and would have won under plurality. Shouldn't we make sure that the winner is at least supported by 50% of votes? Or even more that the winner is preferred by a majority over every other candidate? What about a game that everyone likes, but doesn't make it to the first preference often enough to win?

There are voting methods that are way better than plurality in every way and which fulfil the above requirements.

approval voting: Vote for as many candidates as you like. Write-ins are also accepted.
score: Score each candidate on a scale of 0 to 5. In principle is the same as approval voting but more nuanced.
STAR voting: Like score, but for the top two candidates count the votes again and count how often one was scored higher than the other.

But that's for single winner elections. In the case of electing the server of the week it's different, as each week should feature another server. Simply electing the best would result in the same server winning every time. Excluding the winner from the list would only result in going down the list of servers by popularity. After the first few it would become boring, and later it would only ever elect new or completely unknown servers.
This is why I use the random ballot method. It gives every server a chance by the proportion of popularity. This means, even if some group is flooding the topic and making up 36% of the votes, they will only have a 36% chance of winning. Even more, if some coordinated group makes up 70% of votes, then there is still a 30% chance another server is elected. To allow for more variety I added the rule (see first post), that votes for winning server get exhausted. So if the 70% group succeeds in getting their server elected, they would need to renew all their votes for the next round, while the other votes remain valid.

To answer your daughters questions

There is a Post missing from my daughter, she had good question:

* as 300 server every month one mean 25 years for revisit the same
or every weekend another just 5,5 years for repeating

See above. Servers aren't excluded after winning, but past votes for them. So a server could win several times in a row, but that's unlikely. I hope that we get a healthy mix.

* and for that, is it just visiting, looking around ? - or build something as memory been there
and so how long would that builds, areas granted that exit when come again after 25 or 5.5 years haha

That's up to you. It could be an opportunity to just visit and explore something new, or to meet and hang out - depending on how many players participate.

[Festus1965]

That's up to you. It could be an opportunity to just visit and explore something new, or to meet and hang out - depending on how many players participate.

That's my only point ... something different, whatever I like it or not ... see what others did with mt

[Casimir]

Since 3xile is no more active, I change my vote to [APG] Pixture survival server. Because Pixture is an interesting game (although I have my problems with the crafting system and it's a bit to slow paced at the start), and the server needs some attention to get started.

[Chem871]

IhrFussel server gets my vote.

[Casimir]

Welcome to the third round.

Votes are in:

1. Andrey01 - Tunnelers' Abyss
2. FrostRanger - Blocky Survival
3. Casimir - [APG] Pixture survival server
4. Chem871 - IFS (IhrFussel's Server)

Seed used.

And...
"Server Of The Week is whatever comment number 2 voted for!"

Therefor the fist server of the week is:

[viewtopic.php?f=10&t=20416]Blocky Survival[/url]
voted for by FrostRanger, run by DI3HARD.

It's hard to give an impression of that server. I tried to do some screenshots, but it is so diverse that any set of screenshots smaller than 20 would give a limited and false impression.
I recommend using Travelnet to go to the New Spawn and marvel at the buildings there. Or go to some of the open areas and see the rich plant life. Or just go by lore and see what players have built along the tracks.
It's one of the well visited servers with (currently) 18 players on average.

[Festus1965]

gute Wahl, schon dort - die Technik dort ist es Wert genauer angesehen zu werden.
Am Spawn mal ins Museum, wo man etwas Einblick bekommt. Habe dort seit mehr als einem Jahr eine Basis. Die eigene Solaranlage dort habe ich letzte Woche gebaut.

Trotz auch ping von so 220 für uns hier ist das Spielerlebnis auch vom lag her von feinsten, fast wie auf eigenem Server neben dem Tisch. Wir waren und sind hier mit 3 Kindern die Tage drin gewesen, unabhängig von der Wahl. Auch die Kommunikation ist fein, kaum Bettler. Da ist noch keiner auf /ignore. Da lohnt auch das Besichtigen der Spawns ohne Ladepausen.

[Andrey01]

Oops, I forgot about the meeting. Already second round? When will this meeting start?