I chose an area that seemed to be near where everyone seemed to be building - but with enough distance around me not to interfere with anyone else's stuff. I put it in the large open space between the large buildings and Jons stuff to the west.

I hadn't realised that you had claimed this entire area, and I hadn't realised that all the buildings around here were yours. This seemed to be the place of the most activity.

It isn't that near Spawn and Drew actually specifically found an area that was away from things with suitable amounts of flat area for when him, Patch and Kev started work on the Citadel. It may look like it's near everything now but it didn't used to be, buildings have sprung up nearby.

Yeah it's difficult to know who is using what area but surely people want their own space for expansion etc so why not have a wander elsewhere. The map is there for a reason so you can see what's about, where's flat, where the water is, you can see the railway on it to see how easy it is to get to.

If you feel out of the way build a railway and ask Kev nicely to connect it to the mainline and he'll do the job.

I agree with Matt's final bit. If you want to claim an area there needs to be an obvious boundary - it's why I used a fence and put torches round the coast.

(FWIW, I wandered about then found a large unused area; didn't realise it was as close to spawn as it is.)

However, new people also shouldn't be afraid to explore further out. Once you find an area, /home lets you get there *instantly* (excluding lag), nether gates can do it quickly (talk to HardWork), and tracks are relatively easy to build too.

It's not remotely close, but now that there are lots of other constructions in that area (edit: between your place and the spawn I mean), it's much more relatively closer compared to where I might have to go to start building.

As for the map making things obvious. It might be obvious to you, but I have no idea what your future intentions are for the land you've already built on. And the terrain might be unlimited, but when you have empty pockets and no way to quick travel somewhere, it suddenly becomes much more of an issue. Once you're well established and have resources pouring out everywhere it's a little bit different.

Maybe the spawn should be moved and a DMZ (non-build) area put around it. The only thing that can be built there is a mine cart line that connects to the network?

Like I've said...

I made my first redstone creation near where I was told was the place people use to test redstone stuff. You knocked it down, I wasn't that bothered. Didn't realise you wanted that space clear. It was only an experiment anyway.

I built a tree near-ish your church. Didn't think it'd matter because it was quite a subtle thing. You said you might need that land, I said it was fine, just knock it down.

So I moved out to a place where I knew was far away enough for nobody to need that land and built my thing there.

I built at the edge of what I considered to be the hub of activity. That's how the game is played on all other private servers I've been on.

Either way, I've taken it down and now that I know you have laid claim to this area, I'll make sure it's far away.