How greylist helped me getting whitelisted...

[DJ4ddi]

Hi All!
First of all - I did not really know where to post this. Move it where you think it should be.


This is my story of finally getting whitelisted - propably it contains some useful information for guests or other guys, but it definitely contains my way of saying "thanks" to the VoxelBox and its admins.

You have to understand that not everyone can play Minecraft the whole day. Me, for example. I am currently doing my exams (don't know if the translation is correct - I am from germany and 18 years old). That's why I simply cannot spend more then 2 to 3 hours per week in Minecraft - which is just not enough to get creative. So let's think back to the days of The Daro. Everything got wiped every few days, at least once per week without a chance to save anything. That means I only got 2 or 3 hours to finish a whitelist build. If you think of what a whitelist build should be, that is not much. I am a perfectionist, a person that likes to improve things until I am satisfied with what I did - or like Eric Flannum (Lead designer of Guild Wars 2) would say: I am iterating. And then again. And then again. And propably again. Now imagine you have to build something others like and iterate it until you like it in only 2 or 3 hours and everytime a wipe happens all your work is gone. I don't know how you would handle that, but I got annoyed after the first few tries. Then Quercas came with more place to build, I did some stuff, I did not manage to finish it, I got annoyed, I stopped playing Minecraft on the VoxelBox. It made me sad that I just was not able to do good things in a small amount of time. Of course I tried to plan things then build them in Minecraft, but then I started iterating, improving it - went out of time, everything wiped without being reviewed, annoyed.
Then the greylist came. I immediately submitted my greylist application, it contained a lot of text and some screenshots of builds I made on other servers. It did not take any more tries, after 2 days of waiting for an answer I was greylisted. I started a new project, then had to stop playing Minecraft for a week and thought that it definitely would have been wiped because I forgot to put my name on it. But it wasn't. And I improved it hour by hour. Week by week. It is still not finished, but it was enough to get me whitelisted - with my first building in Facet I was able to do what I couldn't with many builds in The Daro and Quercas. And for the first time in over a half year I leaned back and was just sitting in front of my screen doing nothing. But being happy.


Thanks for reading, I apologize for any english mistakes I propably did - as I stated before I am from germany.
Have fun,

Addi

[AleixASV]

we need more of those opinions, I wanna know how people made it! (i'm still a guest, 4th month on, trying to be wl ) Great iniciative addi!

[Mcholypotato]

we need more of those opinions, I wanna know how people made it! (i'm still a guest, 4th month on, trying to be wl ) Great iniciative addi!

Built a ship in 3 hours, got whitelisted.

[evansmoot]

Built a house in 2 weeks, got whitelisted.

Dm;gWL

[Vashal]

won a ridgedog hosted 3-hour guest build off, got whitelisted

[anden3]

Was guest for 11 months. Built a 3-D fighting game with VoxelGadget. Took a month. Got whitelisted.

[arkotika]

Got Greylisted, spend a day or so just getting overwhelmed by stuff + testing the tools, spend a couple of days building, got Whitelisted.

[AzulCaballero]

I came onto the server in Janurary, 2011, and would just look around for the hell of it. Eventually when I quit my other server in December I decided to get grey-listed (for the Sparklez wave caused Admins to implement this new system), and after 2 days of straight building I got whitelisted for my coal mine, retrofitted into a modern microbrewery.

[coder13]

I too went through those three different guest whitelist build zones. I first just randomly dazzled in the daro not really doing anything. Then came the grey list. I submitted one build witch got denied. Then one more which was 4X better than the first. I got greylisted for that. Then I started building in quercas I do believe. Never finished anything I made. After a while of not playing on the voxelbox, I got back on. New worlds, new everything. I explored, and decided to do some building. And more building. My 1st build was too small and generic, 2nd was too small and not creative enough. 3rd build was reviewed by plusnine. It got denied. After a few more builds, I finaly got a "scare" whitelist by plusnine a month after I got back on.

moral: keep persevering - anden3.

[Jinzha]

First I built the most horrible sandstone box ever, then SedentaryGecko helped me and I made a small house and ELEVn called it "Very close, keep trying" and then Featherblade WLed my restaurant in like the 8th admin review the restaurant got . I'll never forget my menu and the "Cloysters on a bed of cornflakes" that Feather ordered

[Molybdenum42]

Built a Pokémon Lab. No luck.

Built a modern TV channel headquarter. Luck!



(I liked the lab better :<)

[rosedragon]

I never get...

nevermind.

djaddi, I'm sure you would be a great person with your perfectionism and hard working.

[Gavjenks]

Asked nicely, and am devilishly handsome. Got promoted directly to admin.

[Cryptokid]

I looked around the server for a couple weeks, taking in the various forms of architecture that I liked. After that, I went into single player and made my build. I then built it on another, small server in more detail with help from some plugins. After about 2 weeks of revising, I took like 50 screens of it and hopped onto the Voxel Box. With the help of the screens I built it in 2 days and was whitelisted. I think that building it offline and then on another server helped a lot.

[Shakey_aj]

I had a clear plan in my head of exactly what I wanted to make, got greylist on the first try logged on and in 2 days was a member. As long as people plan you can build incredibly quickly.

[BuildingUp]

Wow.. Time to get grey-listed.

[Dr_Obvious]

Wow.. Time to get grey-listed.

You should think about that instead of treading around the forums acting like you've been here longer than most of us here

We should really think about putting up a greylist system for the forums :/ (Just a suggestion...)

[arkotika]

We should really think about putting up a greylist system for the forums :/ (Just a suggestion...)

Ha! You have my vote, Dr.

[Vashal]

We should really think about putting up a greylist system for the forums :/ (Just a suggestion...)

but then people won't be able to post their, what do you think of this for greylist?, which i think are really helpful to new people. It helps them get some second opinions and also make sure their imgurs are open.

[arkotika]

but then people won't be able to post their, what do you think of this for greylist?, which i think are really helpful to new people. It helps them get some second opinions and also make sure their imgurs are open.

Congrats, Vashal:



No, seriously, valid point in my opinion. It makes good sense the to have forum have that function (too). I do believe the good Dr. was joking.

[Dr_Obvious]

We should really think about putting up a greylist system for the forums :/ (Just a suggestion...)

but then people won't be able to post their, what do you think of this for greylist?, which i think are really helpful to new people. It helps them get some second opinions and also make sure their imgurs are open.

[Kellador]

Back on topic here ^^

I got grey-listed hopped on the server, took a quick look around the Factory Showroom and set off to build exactly what I said in my greylist-application I would build, namely a kick-ass library shaped like giant books.
Took me 5 days in total, on the third day when I started the interior work I chose to cut off and demolish almost a third of the whole thing. In the plans I had made it seemed perfectly appropriate to have a second large section filled with bookshelves, seating etc. but by the time I started the interior it just didn't feel right anymore, I was repeating myself and I think it would have depreciated the build as a whole. The fifth and last day I spent just looking at every nook of the build and adding small details here and there, things you don't really think about while planning a build. Then some people came and took a gander at my build, gave me some helpful advice on some things, which I promptly implemented. Plus came by soon after, reviewed it and I was whitelisted

So for advice to anyone working on their whitelist build I'd say:

• Make a plan ahead of time (graph paper and a ruler are very helpful for this, in the end you can even count out the blocks if you want to be exact) and stick to it, but be flexible. When something doesn't feel right during the actual building process you might wanna reconsider your plans.
• Plan out your building process. For me the first step is usually to just outline my build on the ground, then build the basic exterior structure. At that point I mostly take a bit of time to reconsider the shape, window placement, etc.. Then comes the interior. If you keep the walls unfinished for now you can still easily make changes that better fit your interior without having to tear too much down again; I can't count the times where I've already finished all of the exterior just to notice that the interior just doesn't quite fit as planned, forcing me to either make a crappy interior out of laziness or tear open all the walls again.
• Take enough time to go over the details, if you think you're finished go back and look at all the details, you almost always will find something that can do with improvement.
• Get as much advice from more experienced builders as you can.
• Research your ideas, has it been done before? Is there a realworld building like the one you planned? Google images is your friend, my library was heavily inspired by the Kansas Central Library for example.

I hope this helps someone

p.s.: first post yay ^^