Melontown

Melontown

An aerial view of the entire City of Melontown near its founding. Photo taken September 6, 2020.
Defunct community server
Founded	June 8, 2020 (pre-history Melontown) August 7, 2020 ("modern" Melontown)
Government	Democratic city-state
Legislature	Senate of Melontown (since October 12, 2020)
Disbandment	February 7, 2021
Succeeded by	Republic of Melonia Chiefdom of Osolia

Melontown is a defunct community server and online Minecraft nation founded by Michael Webb. Melontown serves as the earliest example of Webb starting an online Minecraft nation, preceding both the Republic of Melonia and Chiefdom of Osolia. The server was open to Michael's friends and Twitch livestream supporters, and discussion of the server was hosted on the TRM Community Discord server instead of an independent Discord server.

The original Melontown server was more of a creative server with a loose government, even moreso than later iterations. This server ended within a month, but it would soon start up again with a different server host.

However, that stint of Melontown would be even more short-lived (lasting a single day) due to cheats and server hacks, which made Webb reset the world. This third version of Melontown led to the creation of the democratic city-state of the City of Melontown, which lasted from August 7, 2020 to February 7, 2021, when it was ultimately shut down due to inactivity.

Prehistory

Older server (June 8-July 14, 2020)

The original “Melontown” was founded on June 8, 2020, when livestreamer Michael Webb/TheRandomMelon decided to open a Twitch subscriber-only server as a reward for their contribution to his stream, along with inviting some of his close friends to join as well.

An aerial view of pre-Melontown, taken on June 16, 2020.

This pre-modern Melontown server allowed the heavy use of Creative mode for several players, making it more of a city-building expedition than a government-based survival multiplayer (SMP) server. Even with this in mind, however, pre-Melontown still had a loose government, with Samuel, now known as lainuel, serving as the de-facto mayor or president. He established, with Webb's help, the first ever address system in Melontown/Melonian history, in order to establish a postal service. The address book was stored in a Google Docs file, which can be viewed here for reference.

This ended up becoming a plot system that established the first ever currency; the iron ingot. Players would own a plot of land and would pay a small tax on it every so often, which was a system that would be reused in the later Melonia, but was not brought to Osolia. This was done due to griefing incidents that no one admitted to doing. The plots were enforced by a plugin named GriefProtection. This plugin was never used in Melonia; plots were instead enforced manually by the Melonian government.

The pre-Melontown server was officially ended abruptly on July 14, 2020, due to the original owner of the server not being able to afford it anymore.

Older Map (August 6-August 7, 2020)

A month after the abrupt end of the original Melontown, Michael Webb decided, with a unanimous vote from several players of the first Melontown, to bring the subscriber-only server back online, this time paying for it himself using a hosting service called PebbleHost, which Melonia used for its server host, along with Osolia in its opening months.

When the server officially opened, however, people mostly screwed around using creative mode and even used server hacks that allowed flying using boats. The next day, on August 7, Webb decided to reset the world, institute anti-cheating plugins, and make the server a survival server, ending the official use of creative mode throughout Melontown history.

History of the City of Melontown (August 7, 2020-February 7, 2021)

Billboards for the first election in the City of Melontown.

Early beginnings (August 7-August 20, 2020)

The City of Melontown was officially founded on August 7, 2020, after the members of Melontown agreed to form a new world that was on survival mode instead of creative mode for the first time in its history.

Official elections were held for Mayor and Vice Mayor for the first time on August 17, 2020. Official campaign billboards were made in central Melontown, which can be seen on the right.

While the exact electoral data is no longer available, meta64 (and his running mate Jedda Keller) won by 1 vote over Michael Webb (and his running mate Cavywav), making them the first elected officials in Melontown history.

The first courthouse in Melontown, built around August 20, 2020.

Very soon after the election, however, Vice Mayor Keller had already stepped down, and was replaced by Cavywav/Michael Webb acting as co-Vice Mayors. During this time, they established the first Melontown Courthouse, a building designed to hear court cases and hold meetings. The group of three elected officials, Mayor meta64 and Vice Mayors Webb and Cavywav, chose Samuel, now known in Osolia as lainuel, as the judge for the courthouse.

Court case #1 - Danni vs Cstro (August 23, 2020)

On August 23, 2020, a court case took place between cstro, the plaintiff, and Danni, the defendant, in the original Melontown Courthouse. The full court recording is archived here. lainuel was unavailable to serve as judge for this trial, so Scion was appointed to do so instead. The defendant, Danni, was accused of destroying government property, and harassment/murder against cstro.

After a chaotic court battle, which included multiple assassination attempts and Danni being locked in her defendants' podium with iron bars to prevent escape and further chaos, the jury found Danni guilty of all counts against her, and Judge Scion sentenced her to pay a fine of 20% of her iron to the government, and 5% of her iron to cstro.

Establishment of streets and the Melontown Postal Service (September 2020)

A screenshot of the Name the Street Challenge which occurred in early September of 2020.

On September 4, 2020, Michael Webb ran a "NAME THE STREET CHALLENGE!" around Melontown, in which he marked every street with different-colored wool and asked people to name each street.

A couple of days later, on September 6, Webb announced to Melontown players that street names, addresses, and mailboxes had been assigned to each resident. Mailboxes in Melontown consisted of a hopper dug into the dirt, with a chest right below it to collect mail. He also established an address book for the Melontown Postal Service, and residents, to quickly find where people and businesses reside. This address book was later replaced with a colorful and easier to read version created by Tom, which is still archived here.

Also, on the same day, the first version of the famous Osolian restaurant, Steak King, was unveiled on Melontown. The name comes from Scion misspeaking on a livestream one day, calling the American fast food restaurant chain, Burger King, "Steak King" on accident. The original version was built to resemble a typical restaurant, with seating and a front counter to order food, along with food and money storage locked away in the back behind an iron door.

Second election and server changes (October 1-October 5, 2020)

For a brief moment, the Melontown server used Factions, a plugin that allows Minecraft maps to be divided into groups, or "factions", that can have various properties of their own and also keep people from going in/out of them if need be. On Melontown, though, it was simply used to mark different locations on the map.

This would, however, be removed on October 1, 2020, after the server members voted to update the server to version 1.16, which did not have a compatible Factions plugin at that time. This also reset the Nether, requiring Nether connections to be remade.

On October 4, 2020, currency conversion rates were established. The official currency in Melontown was simply iron ingots, until the government allowed an exchange rate into diamonds and netherite. Below is a table explaining the conversions.

Melontown Currency Conversion Rates

Conversion	Cost
Iron Ingot -> Diamond	64 iron per 1 diamond
Diamond -> Netherite Ingot	32 diamonds per 1 netherite ingot

As no one else applied to run for Mayor/Vice Mayor, on October 4, 2020, it was also announced that Michael Webb would become mayor, and his running mate, Danni, would become vice mayor on October 9.

Fire at the Melontown Courthouse (October 5, 2020)

A photo of the partially destroyed Melontown Courthouse.

On October 5, 2020, it was discovered that the Melontown Courthouse had been mostly destroyed by a fire, as it was made (almost) entirely of wood. There were already plans to rebuild part of the Courthouse, using quartz pillars, for better use as a Senate meeting building, due to incoming Mayor Webb's plans to establish a Melontown Senate.

Later that day, at 4:58 PM Central Daylight Time, Mayor meta64 and Vice Mayor Webb issued Emergency Order #1, which can be found in full here, but in short, it disallowed entry into the burnt down Courthouse area, except for government officials and construction crews hired by the City of Melontown (JosephineMira Rail Co. and Fishy Civil Contractors), and it gave funding to investigate the cause of the fire and for the contractors to buy necessary materials.

As a further response to this incident, on October 6, Vice Mayor Webb announced that a new law would be immediately put in place titled "Limit on Dangerous Items". Since laws were stored on the server in book and quills back then, the exact contents are lost, but the announcement message states that it banned TNT, fire and lava from being used in Melontown and all of its colonies, except for when the government grants permission to use those items.

Later on, Josephine revealed that she had destroyed the Courthouse building as a measure of trolling Melontown.

Defeat of the Ender Dragon (October 6, 2020)

A photo of the Ender Dragon being defeated in Melontown.

On October 6, 2020, the residents of Melontown successfully took down the Ender Dragon for the first time. To celebrate this victory, Vice Mayor Webb posted on Discord, "MELONTOWN IS VICTORIOUS!" along with the image shown to the right of the Ender Dragon exploding.

Election of Mayor Webb/Vice Mayor Danni and the New Courthouse Opening (October 9, 2020)

On October 9, 2020, Mayor Webb and Vice Mayor Danni were officially inaugurated. Newly elected Mayor Webb immediately used his authority to extend Emergency Order #1 until October 15, 2020, due to the construction of the Courthouse still needing more time to complete. However, later that same day, the construction of the new Courthouse was fully completed. The basement level of the Courthouse remained mostly the same in design and block choices, however, the ground level was completely redesigned, with a grander entranceway made of quartz blocks and pillars.

The interior of the new ground level area for the Melontown Courthouse.

On the outside, there was a sign reading "Courthouse and City Senate". On the inside, another pillar structure made of quartz blocks and pillars was placed in the center, stating "Welcome to the Melontown Court and City Senate building. Head to your right to head in," along with item frames and signs displaying records of past court cases, which at the time only included Court Case #1 between cstro and Danni.

Establishment of the Melontown Senate (October 12-19, 2020)

On October 12, 2020, Mayor Webb, along with Vice Mayor Danni, more formally introduced the Melontown Senate, a group of elected officials which were granted the ability to introduce and vote on new laws for Melontown.

These plans called for the following structure:

• 4 Senators at a time (this became 2 Senators instead)
• Senators may create and vote on laws
• The Vice Mayor serves as President of the Senate, leading votes, but unable to vote themselves unless there was a tie to break
• The Mayor can then sign or veto legislation
• Terms for Senators are 2 months long, the same as Mayor/Vice Mayor

After a lot of discussion and deliberation, three candidates were established: Josephine, who wanted to build a wall or bank and increase population, Scion, who wanted to provide aid to new players, industralize mining and wooding, and expand Melontown, and Rosehip, who would later be known as IsoKamikaze, who wanted to get everyone netherite, expand colonies, and give everyone access to a mob grinder and mending villagers.

The election originally was meant to take place on October 16, but was delayed by a day due to Webb forgetting to set it up. Votes took place on the Minecraft server itself back then and were held in a rushed fashion, leading to a relatively low turnout of 6/14 players (42.86%). The final tally is as follows (bolded names were elected):

Senate Election #1 - October 17, 2020

Name	Location	Tally
Scion	Melontown	4
Josephine	Melontown	2
Rosehip	Iceland	0

The top two vote earners won Senate elections in Melontown, which in this case, elected Scion and Josephine as the first two Senators.

On October 19, 2020, the first law passed by the Senate was passed, titled "SEN LAW #1 - The Voting Ordinance". The full text of the law can be found here, but in short, it encouraged higher voter turnout by extending the timeframe of voting to be an all-day event rather than just a few minutes for the first time in Melontown-Melonia-Osolia history, along with describing the exact electoral process for voting in-person (on the server) and absentee voting (via Discord DMs). The law required a valid excuse to vote absentee, in stark contrast to both Melonia and Osolia, which use absentee-only systems of voting via Google Forms and later my.osolia.

Third election and State of the City Address (November-December 2020)

Not much activity of note occurred until November 23, 2020, in which Mayor Webb announced that the next election for Melontown would take place on December 9, 2020, which would be the first election to take place under the rules of the new Voting Ordinance.

Webb also published a State of the City Address, which can be found in full here, but in short, described the reconstruction of the Courthouse, the creation of the Senate and that they had not been meeting enough, requiring them to meet by December 7, 2020 at the latest.

It is unknown whether the third election took place or not, as the Melontown Election History form does not have any data for that election, except for the candidates who were running: Mayor Webb ran for re-election, but along with a new running mate, Owen, aka IsoKamikaze, as Danni was inactive by that time. For Senate, Josephine is listed as "will rerun", and Scion is listed as "likely to rerun".

Closure of the City of Melontown (February 7, 2021)

On February 7, 2021, the City of Melontown closed down suddenly due to Michael Webb, the owner of the server, not wanting to pay the monthly fee to the server host anymore to keep a dying server alive. The world download was never obtained as no one showed interest in paying for another month of the server to obtain the download.