Wow. Such devastation! People can be so mean and destructive.
Aqua wrote:1. Have a landclaim or protect mod.
3. Have a reliable admin that is on at least every 2 days.
I completely agree with points one and three. It is most unfortunate that jerks exist, but they do. Precautions must be taken.
Aqua wrote:2. Don't give interact by default, make players ask on the forums.
I disagree with point two though. There is such thing as taking it too far. Requiring people ask for interact is discouraging and uninviting to new players. When I was starting out, I completely refused to play on servers that didn't grant interact by default. I didn't even have a forum account to ask with, and had no plans on giving out my email address to yet another site, just to play on servers that didn't seem to want to welcome new players anyway. To not have interact is to close the server off, even if you allow all who ask to enter. Sure, it's a great way to keep out vandals sometimes, but it's also an even better way to keep out shy legitimate players.
Even now, I never do any serous building on servers that don't both grant interact by default (or at least provide an automated way to get it, such as at Redcrab's place) and provide a way to protect creations without requiring staff help. While staff members should be on to help things run smoothly, the server should be set up to practically run itself, in my opinion.
I have interact on a couple of these "exclusive club servers" as I call them, but only because I logged in to look around and the owners recognized me from the forum and granted me interact. I had no intentions of asking, I was just planing to look around a bit. While I sometimes build small houses while talking to people there, I never build anything of substantial worth, as even with membership, it feels too exclusive.