There has been a lot of discussion recently about changes taking place in our guild and the responses have been great. Since there will be a lot of decisions needing to be made about these matters, I felt that there would be a need to organize all of it. I have set up new threads on our forums to help organize and keep separated the discussion of these main topics.
Please keep all posts in this thread related to discussion of Guild Recruiting
[Guild Recruiting Discussion]
Moderators: Global Moderators, WoW =US= Moderators
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requiemdreamer
- Posts: 500
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2005 12:16 am
- Location: CNY
[Guild Recruiting Discussion]
Last edited by requiemdreamer on Sat Feb 11, 2006 10:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
(US) Mannoroth Server
Warlock: Requiemdream
Shaman: Saeglopur
The imprisoner of souls into tiny little purple gem things.
Warlock: Requiemdream
Shaman: Saeglopur
The imprisoner of souls into tiny little purple gem things.
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requiemdreamer
- Posts: 500
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2005 12:16 am
- Location: CNY
Alrighty, I'll get this started with copying what I wrote in one of the other threads:
I do not think that recruiting should stop. I think it should always be open. That there be a minimum of maybe 1 week before membership and a maximum of 1 month. If a reason has not presented itself that the recruit be booted within that 1 month time-frame they are automatically promoted to full membership. In this situation, I think there will be a problem with people having Veteran status. Though it does not really mean anything, I think that it will cause problems with people desiring that status and we will need to create a whole other set of rules on how to obtain it.
I don't think we should require people to join us in raids. Perhaps we might just suggest it as a great way to make yourself known to the group. Wink, Big Grin
Also, (I think this would kind of fall under this topic, I guess) For equality status I think that there should just be Members and Officers. In that respect every member is on the same level, including the officers. Only leaving "Officer" status as the title of someone who has been around for an extended ammount of time and is in a voluntary position to take an active role in helping the guild. By that I mean sorting out disputes, helping newer members, answering questions, and getting to know the initiates, etc. Maybe this is a bold suggestion but it's one I think is fair and once ironed out, could help a lot of situations. Open to suggestions.
I do not think that recruiting should stop. I think it should always be open. That there be a minimum of maybe 1 week before membership and a maximum of 1 month. If a reason has not presented itself that the recruit be booted within that 1 month time-frame they are automatically promoted to full membership. In this situation, I think there will be a problem with people having Veteran status. Though it does not really mean anything, I think that it will cause problems with people desiring that status and we will need to create a whole other set of rules on how to obtain it.
I don't think we should require people to join us in raids. Perhaps we might just suggest it as a great way to make yourself known to the group. Wink, Big Grin
Also, (I think this would kind of fall under this topic, I guess) For equality status I think that there should just be Members and Officers. In that respect every member is on the same level, including the officers. Only leaving "Officer" status as the title of someone who has been around for an extended ammount of time and is in a voluntary position to take an active role in helping the guild. By that I mean sorting out disputes, helping newer members, answering questions, and getting to know the initiates, etc. Maybe this is a bold suggestion but it's one I think is fair and once ironed out, could help a lot of situations. Open to suggestions.
(US) Mannoroth Server
Warlock: Requiemdream
Shaman: Saeglopur
The imprisoner of souls into tiny little purple gem things.
Warlock: Requiemdream
Shaman: Saeglopur
The imprisoner of souls into tiny little purple gem things.
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Bladesinger
- Posts: 280
- Joined: Fri Dec 09, 2005 2:53 pm
- Location: If I were a snake I'd have bitten you.
I belive it's very important to recruit in moderation. Just like a business, if we grow to fast we won't be able to build the kind of [relationship] infrastructure needed to maintain a consistent quality product [gaming experience].
Using time increments and activity requirements for certain benchmarks is the easiest way of creating a standard and easy to understand framework for our recruiting process. As long as we're up front with potential recruits about our procedure we can all feel good about the results. If someone wants to be a part of the guild enough they'll wait out the time. If they're not willing to give us that sort of initial time committment it's likely they're not the type of long-term player we're looking for.
This guild is all about the relationships we have with eachother and relationships take time to build.
On the topic of limiting the number of people in our initiation queue at any one time... As long as all potential recruits go through the get-to-know-us period limiting the number of people in the queue is of secondary importance.
Using some sort of activity requirements is another arbitrary, but important, benchmark. The arguement against requiring a recruit to go through a certain number of events with the group is valid. However the intent behind the requirements is valid as well. Some sort of quantifiable value has to be assigned to an otherwise qualitative and highly subjective criterion. Requiring a certain amount of participation over the recruitment period is our best way of ensuring maximum exposure to the membership.
Something as simple as requiring a recruit play with X number of people at least Y number of times during the recruitment period would work. Making sure the recruit understands that these requirements are only for the purpose of maximizing exposure and not because we have certain requirements of our members all the time is very important.
Keeping track of this is as easy as those folks who play with the recruit going into that person's "file" thread and putting their name and date played down. Giving a brief description of their experience would be great for accountibility when it comes time to accept or reject the recruit's request for membership.
<edit for poor grammar, I'm sure I'll find some more later>
That's it for now I think.
Phil
Using time increments and activity requirements for certain benchmarks is the easiest way of creating a standard and easy to understand framework for our recruiting process. As long as we're up front with potential recruits about our procedure we can all feel good about the results. If someone wants to be a part of the guild enough they'll wait out the time. If they're not willing to give us that sort of initial time committment it's likely they're not the type of long-term player we're looking for.
This guild is all about the relationships we have with eachother and relationships take time to build.
On the topic of limiting the number of people in our initiation queue at any one time... As long as all potential recruits go through the get-to-know-us period limiting the number of people in the queue is of secondary importance.
Using some sort of activity requirements is another arbitrary, but important, benchmark. The arguement against requiring a recruit to go through a certain number of events with the group is valid. However the intent behind the requirements is valid as well. Some sort of quantifiable value has to be assigned to an otherwise qualitative and highly subjective criterion. Requiring a certain amount of participation over the recruitment period is our best way of ensuring maximum exposure to the membership.
Something as simple as requiring a recruit play with X number of people at least Y number of times during the recruitment period would work. Making sure the recruit understands that these requirements are only for the purpose of maximizing exposure and not because we have certain requirements of our members all the time is very important.
Keeping track of this is as easy as those folks who play with the recruit going into that person's "file" thread and putting their name and date played down. Giving a brief description of their experience would be great for accountibility when it comes time to accept or reject the recruit's request for membership.
<edit for poor grammar, I'm sure I'll find some more later>
That's it for now I think.
Phil
Last edited by Bladesinger on Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Shattered Star since 1998
Gallarien of Lorien, Hunter/Woodsman
Gallarien of Lorien, Hunter/Woodsman
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Magdalena
- Posts: 571
- Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2005 5:59 pm
- Location: Mannoroth, USA
Phil I'm referring to your post because I don't think I could have worded that better, these are exactly the things I've been trying to voice in needing to set some sort of limits. They just need to be customized to what our group can handle. Right now, I think we're still doing ok on this, but we're getting on the edge where alarm bells are starting to go off.
Setting standards like this is much easier now, before we've gone over the line, than it would be if we wait until it's too late and we're already drowning in misery. Standards are also better set too tight rather than too wide as it's a lot easier to open up if you realize things are ok and there's room to make an exception than it is to realize that you've got way more people than the group can handle and try to close it down to smaller groups later.
Only way I could see not limiting the number of inintiates would be if the "get to know the guild members" period were placed in front of an initiate invite which is made kind of difficult in this game. In that instance it would mean they'd have to get to know a good number of the guild mates before getting an invite as an initiate, not just one or two.
Can see this working but there are a couple of problems with it...
First, it's going to be more difficult to keep track of those trying to get in when you don't see them on your roster, it will take extra work and people are less likely to go out of their way to get to know them. Second, they're more likely to feel alienated going through this in this order as its causing a 2 times acceptance requirement. I see a potential for confusion and chaos especially as we grow bigger, and don't see a way to maintain when they get the actual invite.
Going to your analogy blade of a company hiring to expand... that's kind of what I was thinking of... A company would go through an interview process, then typically place the person into a contract-to-hire position. Once they were through their contract and either hired or let go, the company would start the process for another person to enter a contract-to-hire position taking their place. The larger a company is, it has to incorprate trusted managers into the mix, the more of these they have who can be trusted to select quality contractors for hiring, the more contractors they can allow in the company at once, but there's always a limit per manager which is why they have to get approvals prior to hiring an additional person.
The difference is first, we're currently fairly small... not really big enough to break up and say trust all the druids to evaluate a new druid or something like that... plus I think we're wanting to keep it centralized and keep all members on the same level, which rules out setting up 'managers' to handle more people. (PS- I used a class not because we'd go by that for admission but because if at some point we wanted to divide out responsibilites for recruiting without creating different levels of membership, something like that would be the best option, setting up a team of management without giving anyone more power than someone else.)
One possible option to maximize both recruiting potential and exposure would be to say all people in classes "a,b,and c" are responsible for evaluating new members of classes "x,y,and z"... however you'd then need to set limits on the number of total players in classes x,y,z could join at once which would somewhat put us at recruiting according to class in some situations where one group's initiates were at max. On the other hand, if we went in overall totals, the group's max might have been 4 people.... by dividing into maybe 3 departments, if each department could easily handle 2-3 recruits at a time, you've just brought the entire guild's limit to 6-9 and still having them evaluated by a fair amount of people.
Another idea to utilize the business idea though is to use a panel style interviewing process for canidates prior to inviting for initiate status. Say set a time/date where every member possible tries to get on vent and we ask the guild canidates to join us on vent at that time... put them all in one channel with all the guild members in another locked channel such as the officers channel. Pull the canidates one at a time into that locked channel and open the floor for questions to them, likely also having a set of base questions that are asked first. Once finished with the interview, let them know we'll get back to them as soon as a decision is made. Once all interviews are complete, open up discussion among the members, then have everyone submit a ballot for the top canidate(s) they saw that day. Have someone contact them or have told them to check back here for the results and post them here. That way the next member they see online can send them an invite knowing they've already been checked out by the guild. Also posting here after a similar ballot taking meeting for promoting new members, so the next person that sees them can promote them and we'll all be aware of who is in what status.
(These are two things that flew into my head with the business analogy and how it could be applied without breaking some of the basic ideals behind this group, so I'm fairly certain there are flaws I didn't see in it, but maybe it will give someone else a thought from which to build a better idea from... start brainstorming)
Those that don't want limits, please submit outlines of a system you see that would work without limits too, I've personally tried coming up with a reasonable one with checks ad balances in place to keep us on the right track without having number limits but have come up empty handed. Would like to hear them as I may see them as better or there may be elements that lead to a better solution since I doubt any one person, myself especially included, is going to come up with the compete and total package that works, what usually works is a combination of several people's ideas. Sometimes the simplest things can trigger ideas expecially when shared among a group... as the saying goes 2 heads are better than 1 and well 10-20+ heads should combine to be even better and allow us to come up with the best ideas possible.
Setting standards like this is much easier now, before we've gone over the line, than it would be if we wait until it's too late and we're already drowning in misery. Standards are also better set too tight rather than too wide as it's a lot easier to open up if you realize things are ok and there's room to make an exception than it is to realize that you've got way more people than the group can handle and try to close it down to smaller groups later.
Only way I could see not limiting the number of inintiates would be if the "get to know the guild members" period were placed in front of an initiate invite which is made kind of difficult in this game. In that instance it would mean they'd have to get to know a good number of the guild mates before getting an invite as an initiate, not just one or two.
Can see this working but there are a couple of problems with it...
First, it's going to be more difficult to keep track of those trying to get in when you don't see them on your roster, it will take extra work and people are less likely to go out of their way to get to know them. Second, they're more likely to feel alienated going through this in this order as its causing a 2 times acceptance requirement. I see a potential for confusion and chaos especially as we grow bigger, and don't see a way to maintain when they get the actual invite.
Going to your analogy blade of a company hiring to expand... that's kind of what I was thinking of... A company would go through an interview process, then typically place the person into a contract-to-hire position. Once they were through their contract and either hired or let go, the company would start the process for another person to enter a contract-to-hire position taking their place. The larger a company is, it has to incorprate trusted managers into the mix, the more of these they have who can be trusted to select quality contractors for hiring, the more contractors they can allow in the company at once, but there's always a limit per manager which is why they have to get approvals prior to hiring an additional person.
The difference is first, we're currently fairly small... not really big enough to break up and say trust all the druids to evaluate a new druid or something like that... plus I think we're wanting to keep it centralized and keep all members on the same level, which rules out setting up 'managers' to handle more people. (PS- I used a class not because we'd go by that for admission but because if at some point we wanted to divide out responsibilites for recruiting without creating different levels of membership, something like that would be the best option, setting up a team of management without giving anyone more power than someone else.)
One possible option to maximize both recruiting potential and exposure would be to say all people in classes "a,b,and c" are responsible for evaluating new members of classes "x,y,and z"... however you'd then need to set limits on the number of total players in classes x,y,z could join at once which would somewhat put us at recruiting according to class in some situations where one group's initiates were at max. On the other hand, if we went in overall totals, the group's max might have been 4 people.... by dividing into maybe 3 departments, if each department could easily handle 2-3 recruits at a time, you've just brought the entire guild's limit to 6-9 and still having them evaluated by a fair amount of people.
Another idea to utilize the business idea though is to use a panel style interviewing process for canidates prior to inviting for initiate status. Say set a time/date where every member possible tries to get on vent and we ask the guild canidates to join us on vent at that time... put them all in one channel with all the guild members in another locked channel such as the officers channel. Pull the canidates one at a time into that locked channel and open the floor for questions to them, likely also having a set of base questions that are asked first. Once finished with the interview, let them know we'll get back to them as soon as a decision is made. Once all interviews are complete, open up discussion among the members, then have everyone submit a ballot for the top canidate(s) they saw that day. Have someone contact them or have told them to check back here for the results and post them here. That way the next member they see online can send them an invite knowing they've already been checked out by the guild. Also posting here after a similar ballot taking meeting for promoting new members, so the next person that sees them can promote them and we'll all be aware of who is in what status.
(These are two things that flew into my head with the business analogy and how it could be applied without breaking some of the basic ideals behind this group, so I'm fairly certain there are flaws I didn't see in it, but maybe it will give someone else a thought from which to build a better idea from... start brainstorming)
Those that don't want limits, please submit outlines of a system you see that would work without limits too, I've personally tried coming up with a reasonable one with checks ad balances in place to keep us on the right track without having number limits but have come up empty handed. Would like to hear them as I may see them as better or there may be elements that lead to a better solution since I doubt any one person, myself especially included, is going to come up with the compete and total package that works, what usually works is a combination of several people's ideas. Sometimes the simplest things can trigger ideas expecially when shared among a group... as the saying goes 2 heads are better than 1 and well 10-20+ heads should combine to be even better and allow us to come up with the best ideas possible.
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Bladesinger
- Posts: 280
- Joined: Fri Dec 09, 2005 2:53 pm
- Location: If I were a snake I'd have bitten you.
Mel,
Referring to your issue about keeping track of folks:
1) Friends list. We've all got them and could use them to keep active tabs on possible recruits. It wouldn't be hard to reserve a couple slots in my list for people seeking membership who will then get deleted from the list once they're members.
2) It seems to me that the Initiate status is just right for giving the feeling of participation within the guild while keeping the division between Member and Non-Member (Initiate) distinct.
As long as we're clear to each potential recruit that Initiate status means they're in a trial period and not yet full members we're good. I checked the other day and it was pretty easy to find out who was a Member, Officer, or Initiate in the guild section of the Social menu.
This would require that every character for each Member be given Member status to prevent misunderstandings.
3) Getting everyone possible on Vent. This is the stickiest situation I can think of. It's a very useful tool for opening and maintaining communication. The question is do we want to give everyone seeking membership our information when they might not be accepted?
I think a formal interview on vent is a bit too strong. We're really more about finding out how the person fits with the group by actions than by questions and answers. The intent behind getting to know each potential recruit is spot-on though and would probably be better served by requiring each recruit to start his/her own personnel file thread and give a written answer to some standard list of questions that describes the who/what/when/whys of himself/herself to everyone. Any discussion of that recruit would then be put in that person's thread for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.
Regards,
Phil
Referring to your issue about keeping track of folks:
1) Friends list. We've all got them and could use them to keep active tabs on possible recruits. It wouldn't be hard to reserve a couple slots in my list for people seeking membership who will then get deleted from the list once they're members.
2) It seems to me that the Initiate status is just right for giving the feeling of participation within the guild while keeping the division between Member and Non-Member (Initiate) distinct.
As long as we're clear to each potential recruit that Initiate status means they're in a trial period and not yet full members we're good. I checked the other day and it was pretty easy to find out who was a Member, Officer, or Initiate in the guild section of the Social menu.
This would require that every character for each Member be given Member status to prevent misunderstandings.
3) Getting everyone possible on Vent. This is the stickiest situation I can think of. It's a very useful tool for opening and maintaining communication. The question is do we want to give everyone seeking membership our information when they might not be accepted?
I think a formal interview on vent is a bit too strong. We're really more about finding out how the person fits with the group by actions than by questions and answers. The intent behind getting to know each potential recruit is spot-on though and would probably be better served by requiring each recruit to start his/her own personnel file thread and give a written answer to some standard list of questions that describes the who/what/when/whys of himself/herself to everyone. Any discussion of that recruit would then be put in that person's thread for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.
Regards,
Phil
Shattered Star since 1998
Gallarien of Lorien, Hunter/Woodsman
Gallarien of Lorien, Hunter/Woodsman
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requiemdreamer
- Posts: 500
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2005 12:16 am
- Location: CNY
I don't think that there will be much of a problem of this. Until a situation presents itself that we must absolutely close our doors to vent, I would like to keep it open. I know there are other ways of having member lists of people allowed onto the server but I would prefer that we not have to do that. We have the option of banning people that become too much of a problem.SSX-Bladesinger wrote:3) Getting everyone possible on Vent. This is the stickiest situation I can think of. It's a very useful tool for opening and maintaining communication. The question is do we want to give everyone seeking membership our information when they might not be accepted?
-Edit-
This is just my opinion and I hope it doesn't get taken the wrong way. It is simply the idea that I think we have all had. If enough people have something they want to change about the server, we will
(US) Mannoroth Server
Warlock: Requiemdream
Shaman: Saeglopur
The imprisoner of souls into tiny little purple gem things.
Warlock: Requiemdream
Shaman: Saeglopur
The imprisoner of souls into tiny little purple gem things.