Staff Knowledge Guide

This guide aims to cover any and all topics important to know for staff members.
This includes commands, limitations, permissions and extras applying to all staff.

General Knowledge - How you can help the server

Cheating the system:

As cheesy as it sounds, we cannot deny that we are a small community and look rather unattractive by sheer player number to people viewing our statistics on voting sites. It is not uncommon for people to judge a server just by that number. They just don't know that we are cool ;) This doesn't mean we can't do anything about it. We can boost this number by making it a habit to bring alt accounts online. Yes, it's a bit deceiving, but it also works quite well. It increases the chance for likeminded, nice people to join and give this server a legit chance.

Why voting is so vital:

The server slot we're shown in on each advertising/voting site is determined by the vote count we can rake up. I know voting sucks, it's boring and can easily be forgotten. I don't think I'm even on any of the vote page leaderboards. *whoops* Anyway, voting really does help. The further up we slide in those ridiculously long  server lists, the more likely players will find us due to them not having to hit 'Next Page' a hundred times.

Know why our last server failed to know why we do(n't do) certain things:

Chances are, you will sooner or later encounter a player who appears to know everything better. Clearly, this is an annoyance as is,
but how would you even begin to defend what we do or don't do if you do not understand the reason? To fill this gap, allow me to explain
why we are so strict on some things or lose on others.  It all began when "we" moved away from a server we used to play on together. Each one of us had shared as well as different reasons to leave that place. There is no point in getting into that reason, however. At the time I left, I already had a server up and running for the most part. I had to learn all the ropes about server management, configuration and what not. It was difficult, but I was determined to create a place that would make up for all the things we were missing on the previous server we played on. Exactly this is what unknowingly drove the server against the wall. 90% of requests from players to either add, remove or tweak, we followed in hopes to please them, which resulted in a server with over 100 plugins. We didn't stop there. If something was viewed to be 'too hard to craft/make/accomplish', we would lower the requirements - this lead to the  server not having any difficulties to overcome for players. Everything began to be easy to get and craft and it caused a lot of boredom within. This is exactly why we do and don't do certain things. This is why it is so hard to convince us to add a plugin or tweak a setting. In the end, we know players usually make suggestions based on their own perception, their own needs and wants, so they have it easier. Always. It's never about the overall wellbeing of the server. Every suggestion reeks of "I am too lazy so I'll convince the owner to do x". It reeks of greed. Horribly.

About moderation

Moderation commands common syntax:

Every moderation command has a common syntax. To avoid having to explain them in each item below, you should know about them. Moderation commands include any type of mute, ban, kick and warning, no matter if temporary, permanent, ip-permanent or ip-temporary. Every field is separated by a space.

1.) Every moderation command starts with the action identifier.
     - IP-actions start with 'ip' such as /ipban or /ipmute
          - IP-actions supposed to be temporary do not start with 't' (this is the only oddball).
             Instead, they get identified by whether or not you added a time field.
     - Temporary actions start with a 't' such as /tban or /tmute
     - Permanent actions that are neither temporary nor IP-actions do not have any prefixing letters such as /ban or /mute
2.) The second argument is always the username of the subject player, not their nickname.
3.) The third argument is always the reason field. The reason can contain spaces without problem.
4.) For temporary moderation actions, the fourth argument is always the time. This piece is skipped for permanent actions.
     The time format is very intuitive and logical:
     - 5s = 5 seconds
     - 5m = 5 minutes
     - 5d = 5 days
     - 5mo = 5 months (here we must use 'mo' because 'm' is taken by minutes already)
   The number and letter have to be together without a space!
5.) The last argument is an option flag. If not used, the behavior falls back to 'publicly visible'. This means every player online can see the action taken, duration, reason and subject player. The silent flag simply looks like the following: -s

Something to keep in mind for Moderators and Admins

Regardless of the fact that you are not a Helper (anymore), please keep in mind that the entire list below for Helpers+ also applies to you! Staff ranks inherit from one another in the following fashion: Owner -> Admin -> Moderator -> Helper -> Bit (default)

- This post will be edited and completed soon -

Commands for Helpers+

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /fly
Description: Toggles your fly mode between true (on) and false (off).
Usage scope: We would like to encourage staff to play on the server as a normal player would and not abuse this permission as perk while they do not also own Tera rank which entails fly. However, it is up to each staff whether or not they want to make use of this outside of staff business (situations that require it for moderation purposes). Eventually, it will be noted though as abusing this may suggest a helper to have become helper for the sole reason of wanting extra free perks rather than a genuine interest in being staff.
Example: /fly

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /invsee
Description: Lets you see the contents of another player's inventory in real time.
Usage scope: This command can be used any time, however you should have a reason. If you suspect a player may be using a dupe glitch, you may take a peek into their inventory and take screenshots as proof. It may not be a bad idea to use this command on random players at random times to silently check on them. You should never expose yourself or other staff in a way that lets player(s) know you are checking (their) inventory, all this would do is make actual dupers try to hide their loot while you are busy commenting on someone else's inventory, anticipating you will check theirs at some point, which in turn causes you to miss it.
Example: /invsee Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /ec
Description: Lets you see the contents of another player's ender chest in real time.
Usage scope: The scope for this command is literally the same as above. Keep in mind an ec is a popular place to hide illegal loot.
Example: /ec Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Low                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Command: /notarget
Description: Makes mobs ignore you unless you attack them first.
Usage scope: This command is useful especially if you need to check areas in which a lot of mobs spawned. Keep in mind that vanish already automatically toggles this on for you. So really it is rather useless. 
Example: /notarget

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /ping
Description: Shows you the target user's ping.
Usage scope: If a player complains about lag or the anti cheat system picked up on them, you should check their ping to see if the lag they experience is due to their connection or actual server lag or if perhaps the anti cheat alert was a false positive. A good ping is below 200. 200-400 is considered alright, but not optimal. Everything above 400 will cause the user to feel the latency. The ping literally decribes the time in milliseconds needed to respond to the server. A lag spike on this connection may cause players to rubberband, meaning they walk and get teleported to an earlier location. This is because the server and the user are out of sync and the server is correcting it based on the last information it has (aka the last position).
Example: /ping Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /playtime
Description: Shows you the target user's playtime.
Usage scope: This command is rather useless. It can provide context for certain situations, for example when you are suspicious of someone you have never seen online before, you can check their playtime to estimate when they joined or if they joined before today.
Example: /playtime Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Low                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Command: /silentchest
Description: Makes opening chests and shulker boxes silent.
Usage scope: This command is very useful - and not at the same time. Vanish already toggles this on for you automatically.
Example: /silentchest

Importance Level: High                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Command: /s
Description: Prefix for the ingame staff chat.
Usage scope: This command is actually an alias made by me for /staffchat. It is way too long to be useful so I shortened it. The staff chat feature should be used for serious matters only and no chit chat to avoid staff getting too used to seeing it and starting to ignore these messages.
Example: /s Hello staff! Only helper+ can see this message!

Importance Level: Low                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Command: /stats
Description: Shows you a lot of statistics about a player.
Usage scope: This is yet again another command that is not all too important.
Example: /stats Zeromaniac

Importance Level: High                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Command: /tp
Description: Teleports you to another player if their teleportation is not toggle off.
Usage scope: This command should never be used unless for moderation/suspicion clearing reasons while in vanish. No staff should ever use this command as way to bypass sending a tpa request to someone, whether the suspect player is a friend or not, as other staff will be unable to know you are friends with the user - it suggests you are abusing it as shortcut. You are free to tp to players in vanish at random times to check their activity, the more so if you feel a player behaves suspiciously.
Example: /tp Zeromaniac

Importance Level: High                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Command: /tpo
Description: Teleports you to another player if their teleportation is toggle off.
Usage scope: Tpo can be used to bypass the teleport protection when a player toggled tpa requests off. The usage scope is the same as above.
Example: /tpo Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Extremely High                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
Command: /toggleduty
Description: Removes your staff prefix from the tablist and chat.
Usage scope: This command may be the most important one for all staff to remember. It can be and should be used any time you like. Whenever you wish to just play like any other player, you should toggle your staff prefix off. Not displaying it tells other staff you are currently not on duty. 
Example: /toggleduty

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /tps
Description: Shows you the server lag.
Usage scope: This command goes hand in hand with /ping. Again, if a user complains about lag and a ping check returned below 400, then you should check the server's performance. TPS means 'Ticks Per Second'. One second contains a maximum of 20 ticks. This is why you will never see a number in /tps above 20. A good tps should be between 18-20. 16-18 is not terrible, but seeing a number like that should make you recheck it in a few minutes. Everything below or equal to 16 that lasts longer than 5 minutes should be reported. Do not freak out when you see 16 just once! A lag spike can happen any time and is no reason to turn the server upside down if it happened a single time for just that very second you checked. 
Example: /tps

Importance Level: High                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Command: /tmute
Description: Temporarily mutes a player.
Usage scope: Tmute or any mute should really only be used when a recent warning brought no success. We aim to give players a chance to learn our rules as long as the rules do not state a higher punishment already. Warning someone who uses illegal cheats is as useless as not doing anything.
Example: /tmute Zeromaniac Spam 5m -s

Importance Level: High                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Command: /unmute
Description: Unmutes a player.
Usage scope: Unmuting a player should always be done with a proper reason, hence why it requires a reason field. 
Example: /unmute Zeromaniac I'm sorry! -s

Importance Level: High                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Command: /warn
Description: Warns a player.
Usage scope: Any time possible, a warning should be used before any other action unless specifically stated otherwise in our rules. Warnings stay 'active' for 7 days until they become 'inactive', however an inactive warning does not lose validity. The activity status solely is a time frame indicator and should not be given too much thought.
Example: /warn Zeromaniac Keep the chat appropriate -s

Importance Level: High                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Command: /history
Description: Retrieves the punishment history of a player.
Usage scope: The history command will list to you any and all types of punishments received. It is a good tool to find out whether or not a player has had similar offenses in the past. Serial offenders should receive harsher punishments in general, however for small things such as chat offenses you may decide to be nice and not increase the punishment but rather issue the same as given last time (i.e. 1 previous warning + you issuing another warning instead of a short mute). 
Example: /history Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Low                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Command: /checkban
Description: Retrieves the ban history of a player.
Usage scope: Checkban allows you to check whether a player is currently banned or not. This is rather useless as any staff should favor using /history over this command.
Example: /checkban Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Low                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Command: /checkmute
Description: Retrieves the mute history of a player.
Usage scope: Checkmute allows you to check whether a player is currently muted or not. This is rather useless as any staff should favor using /history over this command.
Example: /checkmute Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /dupeip
Description: Retrieves a list of all known accounts associated with the user's IP.
Usage scope: Helpers and Moderators are unable to see IP's here, it's purpose is to figure out which alt accounts* belong to what user. This command is only useful in some cases. Dupeip automatically goes off on every single player who logs in and has any other accounts associated by IP, making your job easier. 
Example: /dupeip Zeromaniac

Importance Level: Medium                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Command: /patrol
Description: Teleports you to a player with each usage round robin mode, not teleporting to the same one twice until a whole round was done.
Usage scope: This command can be used as alternative to /tp and /tpo, but should not be overused. There is no valid reason to patrol around the server multiples times a day every day. It's preferred you get to know which players are 'problem players' and tp to them separately. Relying on patrol is a bad idea as it does not involve you needing to get to know the community, it does not give you room to acquire a 'gut feeling' about certain players. Patrol does not favor players who might need checking more often. Consider using patrol on the few days you feel the laziest but still wish to fulfill your job as staff.
Example: /patrol