Question: I'm hosting a Minecraft server with 14 friends of mine playing on it. We peacefully build houses and structures, hold events, go kill the enderdragon, stuff like that. All is peaceful. Until one day, another friend of mine (let's call him "A") joined the server. Then our houses got griefed and burned. Our stuff is all gone. We (me, another owner, and 2 mods) took a month to investigate and finally found that "A" was griefing. We talked to him and told him not to grief again or else we'll kick him. And eventually we kicked him.

And now the problem begins. A moderator wrote to me saying that I should give "A" another chance, and that he apologized. So I thought, why not? Then, after I added him back -- on the very same day -- my best friend's house got filled with water. Checking the records, I found out that it was "A" again. I wanted to kick him, but it would hurt our friendship. I mean, we meet each other at school every day. He would be so mad at me. But if I don't kick him, 3 other players will leave the server.

What should I do to solve this mess?

Answer: 
In an ideal case, he should have to be obey all the same rules as any other member of the server, even if you did not know him in real life.

There are two ways to achieve this, the first is by excluding people who break the rules, the second is by making the rules impossible to break.

As an aside, you say, *"He would be mad at me"*, but I'm not sure how that is more important than you being mad at him, let alone whether he is even actually justified in being angry. Consider that you are putting his wants above your own *and* your other friends. 

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1. Explain to him that he *will* be kicked if he does it again, that these are the rules on the server and *any* case of griefing is dealt with in the same way. Then follow through.

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2. If you would rather enforce your rules by modifying the game itself, then there are some protective things you can do for you and your friends. 

	* Mods which restrict certain people to a "starter area" are common in most public minecraft servers
	* Possibly other mods (*I'm not aware of what all is out there*), which restrict harmful behavior in some way
	* Frequent and automatic backups of the server, just reload a backup when he goes on a destruction spree.
	* A second server occasionally duplicated from the first one that he can run around in.
Create a second server where you can play and have fun and leave him a copy where he can destroy if that is his prefered way of playing.