Every time I log in on a public server I have to repair my buildings. Even the houses far away from spawn get greifed. While this shows that someone was looking at them I really don't like collecting even more books, wood or bricks just to have them stolen again. This is no fun any more. So now I have a private server where I copied my buildings from public with
SpeedProg's saveToLocalMap client. I still do visit the remains of my buildings on public servers sometimes but I'm not really in the mood of creating new things there.