Lord of the Craft Safety Policy

This document serves as a resource for members of the community to understand the Administration’s safety violation procedures, as well as to encourage players to engage in safe roleplay (RP) and out-of-character (OOC) activities. We want to emphasize the risks that are involved in both platonic and romantic relationships that are formed from interacting with your fellow community members. While romance RP is allowed, erotic RP is not permitted on the server. At that, we need to recognize that some activities occur off our platforms. Lord of the Craft’s (LotC) main goal is to ensure the community is educated about consent and safety, as well as the repercussions for violating those boundaries. So, in the best interest of keeping you safe, please read this document.

What is a Safety Violation?

A safety violation results in a permanent removal from our services. Safety violations do not require any warning, and are issued immediately upon administrative approval (unanimous vote amongst the admin team).

A safety violation occurs when:

• A player breaches the consent clause

• A player breaches the age of consent clause

• A player is found to be grooming a member of the community

• A player assists another in breaching the safety policy

• This list is not exhaustive of potential safety violations. If a player engages in any unsafe activities that we believe to be harmful or dangerous to themselves or other community members, we will issue a permanent ban.

As a reminder, we are not law enforcement. We can only do so much to keep people who breach our safety policies out of the community. If we have the opportunity to report someone to authorities in a local jurisdiction, we will surely do so. Anyone who encourages permanently banned players to continue playing or having an influence within the community may join them in their expulsion from our services. The same goes for bringing them into discords, helping them alt, or being a bystander whilst knowing that they were playing on the server. 

Safety violations on other servers will be carried over and vice-versa. The Administration commits to maintaining not only a safe environment for LotC players, but also for the entire Minecraft community. We work closely with other Minecraft roleplaying communities to ensure we all maintain high safety standards.

Safety Procedures

What is a safety report?

A safety report is the first port of call in formulating  any complaint or concern about another player’s behavior or actions to flag them for the Administration Team. Whether it be something heard off-hand to a direct issue between yourself and another player, these will flag the issue for us so that we may begin to handle it in a safe and private way.

How do I make a safety report?

You may send an email to [email protected] or go to any admin detailing the concerns along with some corroborating evidence. There is no specific format for a safety report. Anything you find concerning should be included in the report. As long as we have a name, screenshots (or testimony) of the players involved we are able to move forward in investigating the situation. To ensure a report will be investigated, please send it to an administrator or via email. Moderators and non-administrator staff members cannot issue permanent bans for safety violations. You may also message a specific admin to help you with the process. 

The following types of evidence are accepted:

• Hard evidence 

  • pictures, videos of discord chats, voice recordings, etc

• Testimony 

  • other players corroborating the story

We will always make sure that the player is comfortable with the report moving forward, and ask to make sure that they are okay.

When can I expect a reply?

As soon as we determine the result of the report, we notify the filer. This is usually a quick process (1-2 days), but can take longer if we need more time to reach a decision.

How does the Administration proceed with a report that suggests a safety violation?

Each Administrator checks the safety email on a daily basis. We always investigate every report that comes through our channels. 

A discussion channel within our admin channel is opened up with a link to the report. All administrators are involved in this process. We verify ages via our application system, however this is not always accurate and so we may ask for government-issued ID for confirmation. 

All discussions are archived for internal records.

My reports have not been answered within one to two days!

Reports usually have a response within a day or two, but may take up to a week or longer when further investigation is required. When we are unsure of an aspect or detail of the report, we make sure that we check all our bases before implementing a decision.

What are some questions we ask in a safety report discussion?

• How old are the players involved?

  • How close in age are the players? 

  • Have we heard about players lying about being older or younger?

    • Do we need to verify their age?

• If the report is lacking evidence, who can we contact to corroborate the story?

• If the report was filed by somebody other than the victim, how can we get in contact with the victim?

• What are the safety violations implied?

  • Do we see that in the report?

  • If there are no safety violations, what can we do to ensure this player doesn’t escalate this type of behavior? 

• Is this behavior still happening?

  • If so, do we need to issue an immediate investigation ban?

  • Note: not all investigation bans are due to a safety report. These are issued to quickly defuse a situation that is potentially dangerous.

• Every situation is different, and we may ask different questions specific to the report. The above questions are typically asked in every report.

What happens when a ban is issued?

The player is permanently banned from all LotC platforms. This includes the server, forums, and discord communities officially associated with the server. Community leaders are also sent a message stating that one of their members has been permanently banned, and are expected to remove the means by which they may influence the server in their respective communities.

Administrators immediately cut contact with the banned individual. They are not offered an explanation for the ban.

Why can’t you give us a list of players who have been permanently banned from safety violations?

We can’t provide a public list of players who have been banned due to safety violations. Please believe us when we say that we really want to. We are restrained from doing so as it could result in legal issues for ourselves and/or the server due to libel laws. We are however able to verify whether a player has been permanently banned, though this could be due to a variety of other reasons outside of safety violations.

Appealing a Permanent Ban

Anyone may attempt to appeal a permanent ban. Though, we do not reconsider permanent bans that occur as a result of a safety violation unless the evidence was fabricated. The only time the evidence was fabricated was found before the Administration reached a decision.

Safety Violation Statistics

As of November 2, 2022, approximately 92% of reports have resulted in permanent bans. 118 reports have been made, with 109 resulting in a ban.

There has been 1 falsified report. The person who made the report was permanently banned from our services. This falsified report has been concluded in our statistic.