@Advocate I think the slabs may be a technical limitation. They’d have to deal with every combination of top & bottom slab, which might involve tons of new blockstates or an overhaul of how slabs were handled and thus not be very feasible when they have other things to work on.

Or it might be another vertical slabs thing where they say it “liMitS CreAtIViTY”.

Fair point. I’ll loosen up the rules some.

Oof, that’s never fun. When I’m typing a long comment, I always spam copy it so that I can paste it back if I end up losing it. On PC, you can even use Windows+V to pull up a clipboard history, which has come in handy more than once.

Anywho, glad my reply was helpful! There are a lot of ways to interact with the content on the fediverse, and it seems like you’re well on your way to finding one that works best for you. Hope you enjoy it here!

I think there are a few culprits here.

• Not everything wants to be an everything app. While everything in the fediverse uses ActivityPub, that doesn’t mean everything has to aim to be interoperable. I wrote a lengthy rant about this here, but essentially, it’s important to have things with a more specific, restricted purpose if we want the fediverse to be accessible. If someone just wants a thread aggreegator (i.e., just Reddit’s style of media), they shouldn’t be forced to grapple with microblogging features more fit for a Twitter-like. There are some platforms that aim to combine different media types—Kbin/Mbin has both thread aggregation and microblogging, and I’ve heard that Friendica tries to work well with everything. Even so, if someone wants federated Reddit, they should be able to have federated Reddit, and Lemmy aims to provide that. The same way that Pixelfed (an image-sharing platform like Instagram) doesn’t need to incorporate Reddit-style threads or Twitter-style microblogs, Lemmy doesn’t have to do it all.

• Federation is still in the works. Something to keep in mind is that most of these platforms are early in development and still working out a lot of bugs. Kbin (the platform I use) is an obvious example due to its currently incredibly spotty microblog federation (tho I’ve heard that Mbin has implemented fixes to fare better in this regard). We have to be patient while all the kinks are worked out. As much as we all wish it didn’t, software development takes time—a lot of it.

• Admins can sometimes be a bit trigger-happy with defederation. I don’t think the fediverse has quite grasped that defederation is essentially the nuclear bomb of instance moderation tools, cutting off interaction with all users of an instance. While there are times where this is justified (even preemptively, such with Threads imo), there are times where the nuke has been threatened over a quarrel between admins or disagreements about other defederations. Hopefully, this will cool down as the fediverse matures, but we’ll have to see how that pans out (especially with Threads federation growing ever nearer).

They’ve been mostly resolved in my experience. Kbin.social has been working great.

@interstellar is being developed for Android, and Lunar is working on Kbin support for iOS. Still a good ways to go tmk, but we’re getting there!

If I’m not free to join the Fediverse from the server of my choice, whether that’s mastodon.social or threads.net, is the Fediverse truly free?

Joining the fediverse is just a matter of using a platform that implements ActivityPub (the protocol that lets servers communicate with each other. If Threads implements ActivityPub, it’s part of the fediverse, and the people on Threads can interact without any instance that chooses to federate.

However, instances don’t have to federate with Threads. That’s part of the freedom of the fediverse. If an instance admin decides that they don’t want to deal with an influx of hate, don’t want most of the content their uses see to be from Meta, or just don’t want to federate with a for-profit company that has an awful track record, they should be able to defederate. If a user of that instance really wants to see Threads content, they should be able to move to an instance that lets them, but defederation doesn’t make the fediverse or ActivityPub less free.

While I think it’d be cool to have skeletons spawn more right near fossils, I don’t think increasing skeleton spawning in a single chunk would make it easier to find them. Skeletons spawn all over the place, and I doubt you’d be able to pinpoint a chunk where more skeletons came from than usual. You might be too close to the chunk for them to spawn there anyway. A solution might be to massively increase skeleton spawning in a several-chunk-large area around fossils, but that would probably confuse players who don’t know about the easter egg.

I think it’d be best to just have skeletons spawn at fossils in order to make them more interesting, not really to make them easier to find. If you want the latter, you could just make them more common.

Let me try to explain a bit better.

Let’s take an instance called Instance A. Instance A is currently on the fediverse, which we’ll say is pretty evenly distributed. No instance has a large enough portion of users whereby others would have problems with activity loss if they defederated, which is good. If any instance starts doing things that Instance A doesn’t agree with, they can defederate, and less activity won’t be much of a concern with defederating from that single instance.

But now, let’s take Instance B. Instance B is planning to implement ActivityPub and join the fediverse, and when it does so, it will control 80% of the activity. In other words, it has as much activity as the rest of the fediverse combined.

However, Instance B isn’t particularly trustworthy. They don’t value the open web like the rest of the fediverse does, their moderation is extremely poor, and they haven’t cared for general well being in the past if it meant raising profits.

Here, Instance A and instances like it have two options: defederate immediately, or wait and see.

• If it defederates immediately, Instance A will see some users move to other parts of the fediverse because they’re excited about the 5x increase in activity from Instance B. They probably won’t go to Instance B now, but maybe Instance C or D. However, a lot of people will be fine. After all, activity is staying the way it is, and Instance B is untrustworthy anyway.
• If it waits and sees, this allows people on Instance A to enjoy and get used to the 5x increase in activity. Not bad so far.

However, let’s say Instance B starts having moderation issues (e.g., widespread hate speech and more-than-usual spam) as everyone reasonably predicted. Instance A now wants to defederate.

• If it defederated before, no problem! Nothing needs to be done.
• If it didn’t and wants to start defederation now, good luck. Now, everyone on Instance A has gotten used to the 5x activity on Instance B, and you’re going to have an extremely difficult time convincing them to cut the activity they see and the users they follow by 80%. Way more people will leave Instance A if it defederates now than if it had just defederated early on.

In other words, if people on Instance A come to rely on Instance B for the activity they’re used to, way more people will join the camp of “I’m leaving if you defederate with Instance B” then if Instance A just defederated from the get-go.

Let’s take another example. Instance B wants to try to grab a bunch of users, so after some time, they stop federating at all.

• If Instance A defederated, the people there are fine. They never saw stuff from Instance B anyway.
• If Instance A didn’t defederate, then 80% of the content that people are used to will suddenly be gone. Most of the accounts they follow will be disconnected, and activity will fall a ton. These users on Instance A will have two options: stay, with a horrendous drop in activity and no posts from the accounts they’re most interested in; or just go to Instance B.
  In either case, Instance B will be fine. Most interaction was between Instance B users, so this won’t be that much of a deal. But for users on other instances that are used to seeing stuff from B, it’d be catastrophic.

In short, defederating immediately has much smaller consequences than trying to defederate when whoever you want to defederate from controls most of the activity that your users see.

That’s because I’m not fully sure on how people should act in respect to this Threads situation (which is what got me thinking about all of this in the first place). In the recent past, I was all “defederate defederate defederate defederate,” but now considering that multiple large platforms (like Flipboard) will be joining in, it’s less likely that one company will control a majority of activity. Of course, you don’t need a majority for there to be a problem — just a large enough portion for other instances to have issues defederating due to the amount of content they’d lose — but a mere large portion and not a supermajority may not be reason to defederate. Of course, there are other things to consider as well, and I’ll probably make yet another wall of text with my new thoughts on how instances should handle this in the near future. For now, this thread is for me to share the ideals that I think people on the fediverse should prioritize and for others to discuss what they think on the matter.

Of course, these platforms have only federated a handful of accounts, so the “chaos” right now is in the reaction and discourse. However, I don’t think it’s unjustified.

I’ve outlined my main issues with Threads federation here, and while I’m not as sold on preemptive defederation as I was when I made the post, I still find it reasonable to be concerned about about for-profit companies controlling a vast majority of the content, especially when (A) the users making that content may be unaware that they’re on the fediverse to begin with and (B) companies like Meta have a terrible track record and would have incentive to grab a ton of users by defederating if they’re able (though with so many other parties joining in, whether they’ll be able to pull something off like that is becoming more questionable, hence me being less sure of the need to defederate).

Nah, just some teen making very inefficient use of his time

Even if we're comparing Mojang now to Mojang then (instead of to modders), all my points still apply. The situation Mojang is in now is completely different to the situation it was around when jungles were in.

Now, Mojang has to

• adhere to greater quality standards for each feature
• develop for more platforms
• ensure that features come out on all platforms in parallel, lest everyone be complaining about parity issues
• make code with longevity in concern—much of recent updates has been fixing buggy, inflexible, unoptimized code from way back
• go through more levels of approval

And even with all of these restrictions, what they've been able to achieve is impressive. Look at Caves & Cliffs. In one and a half years, Mojang managed to

• redo the biome system to allow for cave biomes
• add two new cave biomes
• overhaul mountains with several new biomes
• overhaul the rest of surface generation
• overhaul cave generation
• redo ore distribution
• add ore veins
• add three new mobs (glow squid, goat, & axolotl)
• create seed parity between JE & BE
• increase the build limit
• add a ton of new blocks, some of which have completely new mechanics (e.g., big dripleaf, pointed dripstone, powder snow)
• compose several new music tracks
• do their usual round of technical changes & bug fixing

And that's all in two different programming languages for two different engines, one of which is on tons of different devices. But no, people compare this to what we were promised at MC Live in one year and complain that Mojang is deliberately working slowly and not doing enough.

Let's even take a look at 1.20. In just a year, Mojang added

• an entirely new system: archaeology
• all the different items that come from archaeology
• trims, an overhauled smithing table to go with it, and a new technical system to implement them
• tons of new building blocks, including two wood types, hanging signs (+ the ability to edit them), and chiseled bookshelves
• a new biome
• two new mobs with completely new mechanics
• their usual round of technical changes & bug fixing

And I'm lying by saying that's what they did in a year, as that's discounting all the 1.19.x updates (which were significantly larger than usual 1.x.x updates). In those we got a completely reorganized creative inventory and several new commands and gamerules (e.g., /fillbiome).

Yes, it would be great if Mojang could add more and still adhere to their quality and performance standards, and I have many gripes with how some of these features are implemented, but I don't see how it's reasonable to expect Mojang to just work even faster than they are or pretend that they're just lazy and doing the bare minimum to keep the game alive. What exactly are you expecting Mojang to deliver in a major update?

Calling it "grabby grab" makes the feature seem worse than it is. Extra building range is extremely helpful and makes building easy more fun. I've played with the Create mod, and its extendo grip (which increases range by 4 blocks when in the offhand) is a game changer. But you wouldn't even need 4 blocks for it to be useful. Just 2 would be totally worth it, especially since there isn't really need to put other stuff in the offhand.

Meanwhile, dog armor sounds nice, but it won't make wolves viable. They aren't that strong in combat (often struggling to land a hit), can't be controlled beyond right-clicking to toggle sitting, & will die from lava, and armadillo armor (armordillo?) won't solve those issues. At the end of the day, wolves will still be a liability more than they are a help.

I'm torn between crab and armadillo, but I think I'll vote armadillo.

I don't think dog armor is really going to be that useful outside of just looking cool on your wolf. It probably won't save them from lava or make them actually that helpful in combat. Granted, dog drip is cool, but it's not like wolves are suddenly gonna become viable because of it.

In contrast, the crab claw is much more useful. From my experience playing modded MC, extra range is so so so nice for building. Even 2 blocks of extra range would probably be great.

But with all that being said, I'm thinking I'll still voting armadillo for a couple of reasons:

• This isn't how I want to see a range extender implemented. This is the kind of thing that could be midgame or even endgame structure loot just because of its utility, but instead it's… a drop from a random mangrove swamp mob? It seems like a massive waste of an opportunity.
• Armadillos are the best mob from an ambience perspective. Savannas desperately need some more life, and even if ostriches and termites will be coming eventually, armadillos are a great addition for that. If they roll/unroll, especially if in response to the player getting close, it'll add a lot of movement to the savanna. Meanwhile, mangrove swamps are already much more visually interesting than normal swamps, so I don't get making the quality gap even further.

I’ve never been a huge fan of how Minecraft’s paintings looked. In contrast to the great pixel art of most of the game’s textures, the paintings seem like cropped and downscaled JPEGs of their original counterparts, sometimes with an edit mixed in. Thus, I started a project a while back to redo the game’s paintings. I’ve done 20 so far and have 6 left to go, and I figured I’d share what I’ve currently done here! I plan to release these as a resource pack when I’m done.

Here are the old ones for comparison.

I’m not really seeing the problems with these rules. Yes, Minecraft is a game for all ages, and by extension, it’s perfectly reasonable for Mojang to ask that you don’t make money off a server on their game if it has porn and gambling there. A lot of it basically boils down to, “Don’t make your unofficial things look official, and you can’t make money off our family-friendly game via adult content or anything that would hurt Minecraft’s brand.” If you’re making money off a Minecraft server or another Minecraft-related product, that can reflect on the Minecraft brand, so it’s perfectly reasonable that they have restrictions on that.

What exactly in these guidelines do you have an issue with? I’m not seeing the problem.

To repeat, they haven’t really given themselves new ability to do much of anything. These guidelines have existed for a while, only that now they’ve been reworded and clarified a bit. They’ve had in their guidelines for at least 3 years that servers you’re making money off of should be child-friendly. The same goes for the rules about constructed promotions. All of this freaking out is based on the worry that Mojang will suddenly start taking down maps and servers they haven’t in the past under the exact same rules they’ve had for years when they have no reason to.

Something that people don’t seem to be aware of is that about all of this stuff has been in place for several years. If you go look at the old usage guidelines, the rules that everyone is yelling about are nothing new and have existed for a while.

For example, AntVenom says that server ranks are dead based on this:

You may make money by…:

• Asking for donations, so long as you don’t offer the donor something that only they can use[.] However, you may offer all players server wide rewards if donation goals are met.

However, ignoring AntVenom’s claim is refuted two bullet points later—

• Selling cosmetics, except for capes or anything that attempts to visually act like the feature of a Minecraft player cape

—the old commercial usage guidelines, which were in place since at least 2020, say the exact same thing about donations as the new ones:

…YOU MAY:

• ask for donations (as opposed to direct charges) IF you do not offer the individual donor something in exchange that only he or she can use. You may offer server wide rewards if donation goals are achieved though.

Yet, lo and behold, server ranks are still around.

Mojang isn’t killing servers and maps. They’re not going full 1984. These are pretty much the same guidelines that have been in place for at least 3 years—just with some clarification. Server ranks didn’t die, maps with McDonalds in them weren’t taken down, and unless you think the devs are suddenly going to go full evil mode when it would just actively hurt them, there’s no reason for all of the fearmongering.

EDIT: Fixing formatting with the quotes

Villager quests seem like a cool idea and would definitely make interactions with villagers more interesting! However, there are a few gripes I have with the implementation here:

• The quest GUI shouldn’t be some quasi-secret GUI you can only access by sneaking and right-clicking. It’d make more sense to have it as a button on the villager trading menu.
• The quests are REALLY easy. Obviously, these are just examples, but there should be some effort involved in performing a quest. Otherwise, it’s not really all that engaging.

I’d also suggest that the quests relate to the profession of the villager and be things that the villager would actually want. A shepherd could ask you to get an assortment of dyes, a fisherman could ask for wood to make fishing rods and campfires, any villager could ask you to kill zombies in the area, etc.