Advanced Apologiy and forewarning

[Zed-F]

I think normal attrition by demoting inactive members to member status is probably the right approach at least to start.

[WarBlade]

One of our problems in this area is "the unwritten mutual agreement" leaves some level of ambiguity that might cause conflicts. I don't mind a very unregulated set up personally, but do acknowledge that opinions may differ on where the dividing lines are...

My understanding of the way we operate in general is we makes decisions as a guild more than as an individual. How this translates to officer promotions has been something like this:

1.) New member gets invited.
2.) New member spends a month or so getting known by the guild.
3.) By mutual agreement of several people the new member might be promoted to officer.

We haven't maintained any concrete rules on this. It's just an etiquette thing where we share the decision making around as much as is practical so that a number of the guild are involved.

My view is that being an officer or being a member doesn't mean anything. Nor should it ever mean anything for us.

KingOfPain actually started this guild off with that kind of approach and unfortunately that caused a few problems. In fact it led to the creation of this very thread we are posting in now. As a result we started using the Member status and that has been a marked improvement over what we had before.

I did remind wyrm about us demoting inactive officers, and suggested that we move this from 3 months to 1 month.

I'll say two months. We've had members going on leave for just over a month (myself included - Hawkmoon as guild leader) and I'd prefer not to have to see officers bouncing up and down the list just because they're out of touch for a while.

I have winced a little seeing certain random promotions happen, for example our completely silent Mithras who has had zero interaction or talking with us despite several efforts. I believe he's Grimm's boss and may not even speak english well, and he's done nothing to abuse the "power", but I don't know why someone with zero interaction in the guild suddenly gets promoted to officer.

His English is fine. He sometimes livens up at the mention of Underworld and I've seen him run that Ritualist of his in RA. Still, someone with Mithras's level of participation in guild activities shouldn't have been promoted to officer.

And while I do trust Shadguy quite well from our past dealings, I hadn't played with him much in GW so I wasn't the one to immediately promote him to officer, with the thought that he should at least see how RB operates first. On the flipside I think one of us (me?) promoted Temba/Rakim B in short order, because a fair number of guildies already know him well and have played many games with him. If we think some kind of policy is needed that put a "waiting period" then that wouldn't necessarily be a terrible thing, but it wasn't particularly needed in that case.

Shadguy popped into the officer list too fast IMO. He's fine, but even still the situation didn't give those who didn't know him much of a chance to get to know him first and that was the thing that was missing.

Temba. Well if he sticks around I don't have a problem with him turning up in the officer list. There are a few of the GvG participants who guild-hop a bit though and I'd prefer not to see a cycle of invite and promote for these people.

[Hureg]

I'll say two months. We've had members going on leave for just over a month (myself included - Hawkmoon as guild leader) and I'd prefer not to have to see officers bouncing up and down the list just because they're out of touch for a while.

What practical purpose do they serve there though while they are away? I think it's especially relevant for people who we know are going to be away for a period of time. I'm failing to see the harm in Fox's suggested approach of demotion after 2 weeks and re promotion whenever activity starts up again.

The only remotely simple and fair thing I can come up right now is to get more aggressive about officer activity, demoting people that have been off for two weeks and not restoring them until they log on more than once a week, as the chances of them inviting and retaining someone are low in that case.

Extending the Guild list to fill the page does improve things (i'm an idiot) and coupled with Fox's approach of ditching 2 week inactives back down the list would see currently Drasca down being cut and leaving room for up to a handful of visible members. This is a step in the right direction and should suffice for now and probably long term unless we go on some sort of recruiting spree and are blessed with enough good finds to once again block out the members list. Where as cutting 2 month inactives does nothing to improve the problem at all...

If you guys want Gigi to undergo the screening process then I hardly doubt she'll mind. Everybody else I see on the officer list I know except Mithras and Sir Salamandastron (maybe he contributes though??? I don't know, I was away for ages). If neither of them do contribute, then i say demote them and if they take offence and leave then no loss really.

[Seijin]

I do have the problem of not scrolling down the guild list. And I don't want to make my window any bigger. As it is I tend to open a crap load of windows anyways. So if the guild list is closed I can see more.

I can deal with the 2 week time frame of activity thing. But does wyrm want to manage that and deal with any headaches that might be come about from such a short time frame? I really have no problems with it. And I think there are extenuating circumstances, such as if someone is going on extended vacations (like Hawk) or is having some really crappy computer problems, or is moving, or stuff like that. If they go away to take a break from GW (like I do at times) or to pursue other things than GW for whatever reason (like mucco or doc), and they're gone for that time frame, they should be demoted. Even if the person is just busy in RL with other stuff and doesn't have time to play, they should be demoted as well. It can't be helped, but thats just how it would have to be until the person is able to play more consistently.

The quick friend promotes hasn't bothered me. But I say give the person 1-2 weeks before promoting them to see if they'll interact with the guild and if they're trustworthy. If the person doesn't interact with us in any way then there's no reason to make them an officer.

Guild hoppers i don't really care about as long as they don't cause any disruptions. I haven't seen that though, so no problems here if they're officers for the time being until they hop guilds again.

May grammar is so messed up right now...i don't feel like going back to fix it though.

[WarBlade]

What practical purpose do they serve there though while they are away? I think it's especially relevant for people who we know are going to be away for a period of time. I'm failing to see the harm in Fox's suggested approach of demotion after 2 weeks and re promotion whenever activity starts up again.

The reasons to leave things alone are entirely unrelated to what practical purpose absentees lack.

Administration headaches. You really want another forum thread to hammer out exactly all the if's, but's, and when's, that will crop up on a fortnight's activity time frame? I don't. And I really do not wish to see the officer list bouncing around in size every week. I think I'd actually get weary of handing out 100g every time one of the officers needs a leg up.

As far as benefits gained from doing it I can't really see any. It shortens the officer list and makes it a bit unstable. That's it.

I give the idea a thumbs down. :thumbsdow Three months is fine. I'll go along with two.

[Zed-F]

I think two weeks is a bit short, personally. One month sounds about right to me. But I'm not that fussy about it.

[Hawkmoon]

Personally, I also think that 2 weeks is a bit short, but if Wyrm wants to have the administrative headache of doing it, I promise I won't take offense at being demoted during summer vacations. (We get back home tomorrow night, so look for me online Friday and Saturday nights!)
Seriously, though, I don't think that shortening the officers list will do as much practical good as you think, if you're using activity as the criterion, since online names automatically float up to the top. But I do think that guild members who don't interact with the rest of the guild shouldn't be officers, and there should be some sort of "trial" period (I hesitate to use that term, since it sounds like we're going to pass judgement on them at the end, which we're not, but I couldn't think of a better term), if only as a courtesy to the rest of the guild.
If we want to seriously try recruiting members, then we might try having nights where we pick a particular mission, and then go help people through it. Or at least try to fill out our rosters for missions or dungeons with non-RBers once in a while, rather than automatically add heroes...
Just my $0.02.

[shadguy]

Shadguy popped into the officer list too fast IMO. He's fine, but even still the situation didn't give those who didn't know him much of a chance to get to know him first and that was the thing that was missing.

I'm cool with getting demoted or whatever y'all deem best for the guild. I was a bit surprised [but flattered] to find myself an officer when I was promoted, too. I do still feel like I'm getting to know the guild, and I don't generally do much in the way of recruiting and such regardless of my tag.

Anyway, I'm cool with whatever minimizes politics/hard feelings/distractions from actually playing.

-Dave

[WarBlade]

I don't think there is much point in dropping you back to Member at this point.

[Courin]

So to summarize what I've read so far:

It seems that we’re talking about 2 issues in this thread. The first is the inability, due to the length of the Officers list to easily see the Members list and know who is on to interact with them. The second is the issue of if there is a difference between being an Officer vs a Member, and if so, who should be which and under what guidelines.

As for the first issue, most of us come online with a general greeting aimed at the Guild, not specific individuals. If I notice someone else who comes online and doesn’t say “Hi”, I usually greet them individually. However, they are likely to be on the Officer list, (which is currently at 26 Officers, none of whom have been off-line more than 2 months) as I also don’t think to scroll down that often, since I am usually only opening the window to travel to the Guild Hall.

However, whenever we get a Guild event going, like a Z Quest for example, the invitation to participate is almost ALWAYS an open invitation, and new members are welcome to participate. We do tend to send out messages along the lines of “So-and-so, you interested?” but only after we’ve sent out a general announcement and that individual expressed interest and we are confirming it, or we really need another fleshy-type and are trying to drum up support.

Bottom line is that the Officer List is long, even with people who have been inactive for 2 months (of which there is currently only 1 person, with 2 falling in the 1 month category….) So no matter what is decided on the Officer vs Member issue, if we keep Guild greetings general, and Guild invitations general, we are including all Guildies, be they Officers or Members. Should they choose not to respond or participate, so be it. :rolleyes:

As for the second issue, I think that most people feel that there is a difference between being an Officer and being a Member, and that difference is that while we expect all people in RB to embrace the Guild’s philosophy, we trust an Officer to make good decisions about who might make a good member, thus giving them the ability to invite and/or promote. People that are invited and play with other Guildies on a regular basis get known, and demonstrate that they are trustworthy, and so are promoted to Officer status.

WarBlade’s post gave a nice guideline to how promotions have usually been handled……

1.) New member gets invited.
2.) New member spends a month or so getting known by the guild.
3.) By mutual agreement of several people the new member might be promoted to officer.

As for demotions, there seems to be general agreement with the idea that inactive Officers should become Members, the only sticking point seems to be the length of time of their inactive status. The suggestions have ranged from 2 weeks to 3 months. Since no one currently on the list is more than 2 months (1 person, with 2 others at 1 month) I think 2 months seems reasonable. That is, when their status changes from 1 month to 2 months, that means they’ve been inactive 60 days, and should perhaps get moved to the Members list.

I would add however, that there should be exceptions made to this guideline for special cases - for example, WarBlade is an active member, on pretty much every day. We all knew he was going to Denmark earlier this year for slightly over a month, so we weren’t surprised to see his account inactive. In a situation where someone who is a regular player has let the Guild know they won’t be around for a while because of a special circumstance, and we know they are going to be back to playing regularly, I would not want that person demoted, even if it meant they were absent more than 2 months.

That would resolve the concerns about a constantly yo-yo-ing Officer list, as it would take into consideration the activity level of the Officer on a regular basis, not just during a certain timeframe.

I also agree that there's no sense trying to apply any guidelines decided here retroactively (e.g. Shadguy.......) I think that he's been a wonderful addition to the guild, and I'm not saying that cause he used to live down the street from me.......sort of..... I'm just suggesting a guide for going forward.