For those of you who don't know of this mod already, Votekick is a server mod that gives all players the power to kick or ban each other if enough people agree on a vote.
I cannot think of any good reasons to have this abusive-as-crap mod. I've seen too many good servers turn into hellholes because the host decided it would be a great idea to give players the power to kick/ban each other. A good 90% of the time that I see this mod used on servers, the players use it for malevolent purposes, such as:
- Kicking people on enemy teams in TDMs to give the other team an advantage
- Getting "revenge" for being killed under acceptable circumstances
- Plain, simple trolling
- 'Getting back' at other players for losing an argument
- Kicking guards on Jail RPs via falsified claims of freekilling
- Kicking players who are unpopular/disliked but not actually doing anything wrong
- Getting revenge on other players for being votekicked, this usually always escalates and becomes a massive problem
- Kicking after overreacting to jokes/small insults/other menial things
Despite all these bad things about the mod, I can't deny that it has good uses too, and i'm sure the guy who made it had good intentions for it. It simply isn't used properly. Giving everyone powers that only admins should have causes massive problems. I can recall multiple scenarios where this kind of thing happened:
Back in the fall of 2011, on
Pecon7's boss battles, Votekick was enabled on the server and was constantly, and heavily, abused. I clearly remember that we could hardly go one round on the server without people trying to kick the boss. Usually they succeeded, and so rounds reset often when people didn't like that they were losing to the boss. This became such a big problem that I couldn't stand to be on the server anymore, since being the boss was the worst position to be in, as people kept trying to kick you for absolutely no reason; I could rarely ever get to play a full round since votes to kick the boss were always active. Granted, votekick was from time to time used for good meaning too, such as kicking AFK/hiding bosses, but both of these problems were eventually eliminated altogether when AFK kicker was implemented and barriers were added to block off hiding spaces. The mod stayed on the server for a while, but eventually it was removed. Thank goodness.
One of my personal favorites is
Reinforcement's Jail RP. I don't go to the server anymore, but I have many memories of unpleasant experiences there. Being a guard on a Jail RP is already tough, prisoners are always accusing you of freekilling and you risk getting mistakenly banned by an admin because you defended yourself. The server had votekick, and its counterpart addon, voteban, enabled. Together this meant that prisoners anywhere at anytime could get a guard banned for 15 minutes for "freekill". Most of the time this was completely falsified, and I hated being the guard because douchebags were always accusing me of freekilling and trying to get me banned because they died, or that I accidentally shot them in the middle of a firefight with another armed prisoner. It sucked, and eventually I just gave up on the server. It was simply unplayable. I followed the rules and didn't freekill, yet because of votekick and voteban, I got banned multiple times every day for something I didn't do.
There are many others too, including
cat123's knife tdm and
tango's fort wars.
There are some interesting excuses out there in favor of this mod, but most of them are stupid:
It establishes the freedom of a democracy!Blockland is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship. You've got the host and his admin teams. Everyone else is just a normal player. People who don't have admin do not have it for a reason. Votekick basically says that now everyone gets a shot at playing admin by having the potential to kick and ban each other. This is simply idiotic. Also somewhat relevant:
We should really have a vote!
Blockland is not a democracy and neither Badspot nor I were elected. Sorry.
It's an effective administration tool!This mod is far from effective. In fact, it is the exact opposite. It creates more chaos than it does order. Giving non-admins the ability to kick other people is not an effective method at administrating a server. Regular players should not have the job of administrating your server put into their hands. It always causes problems and it simply doesn't work.
I'm afk often so I have to use it since I can't administrate the server!This is an unacceptable excuse. Get more admins. Admin systems are implemented into the game for a reason. If you are afraid of your admins abusing while afk, then they do not deserve to be admin and therefore all the other regular players do not deserve to be "given the right" to abuse with votekick. Why would you rather allow random people you don't know to abuse power on your server than an admin who is at least partially trustworthy? Votekick is not a healthy or effective administration system.
I'm just really mad that i'm seeing so many servers using this abusive and inappropriate mod all the time. I hope I may have changed some of your minds concerning this issue, and it certainly means a great deal to me.
What do you think about votekick?
EDIT:
Just so it is clear, I am not saying "BAN THE VOTEKICK MOD FROM ALL SERVERS!" If you want to have this mod that is your choice, but I want you to be aware of the negative consequences that come with this mod, and why it is abusive.
