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 Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 10:03 am
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wesden Amensu Saje Well wesden, I'm the current Captain of a support guild, and I'm trying to get some of my members to be more active inside the guild. Well I've found it very inconvenient when I'm trying to contact the inactive members of the guild, and I've got to send them individual PMs. I really feel that it could greatly increase use of guilds, if we could have a feature within the guild moderator panel, so that the Captain can choose which members get the announcement. And if they want all of the members to receive it, then there will be a button which can be checked that says "All". This way it knows to send it to every member. And other than that, you can go through a list and check the members you'd like to send the announcement to.
This way members that are active, aren't getting pointless announcements from the guild. But the ones that do need the announcement will receive it. I feel that every guild could be more active if a feature such as this would be created.
I know it would create a much easier way to contact the necessary members of the guild. I believe that the Captains within guilds would very much appreciate something like this. One of the reasons we created the guild announcements was to bring back inactive users. Sure, the main point is to communicate with active users, but its a great retention tool, too. Being able to select which members to send was never really on the radar, as it was meant as a guild announcement. That's not to say that one day it won't be, but the teams have moved off guilds for the time being. And as I mentioned earlier, guild usage is not as strong as we through/hoped it would be after the improvements we made so its hard to get resources back on the guilds project at the current time. Keep an eye out in the future...I hope to get back to guilds and make some improvements with the team smile
Thank you for the information. I'm trying to begin bringing the guilds back as a user of Gaia. The guilds are one of my favorite parts of being on Gaia. Thanks for reading my post. |
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Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 3:52 pm
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Hey wesden, great to hear from you again!
I think the most unfortunate thing about mass PMs is that the feature became a giant symbolic issue over the past few years. It took on importance that it didn't really deserve.
Maybe the decline in guild activity has something to do with the lack of attention paid to them by staff for some years. Maybe, who knows? But I'm sure that it will take more than new interfaces and features to bring users to guilds again.
I disagree with those on the previous page that say the developers simply need to do more. Yes, there is more that could be done. But it isn't the answer for bringing in more users. If all the major advances already implemented don't bring in more people, further development is unlikely to.
I'm sad that mass PMs, and the other fantastic improvements, like the new Mod Panel, new Guild Registry, new member list and mass admin tools for join request queues, haven't led to a spike in guild activity. But I don't think that can be blamed on any deficiencies in the updates. I honestly don't think any adjustments would lead to such a spike - the updates were well thought out, it's now easier to browse guilds, manage members and communicate with them.
Bringing more members to guilds is more of a social issue now I think. Admins didn't help when they paid the guilds not attention, but that isn't the case now, and I think Gaia will gradually come around to that. It's a process that current guild users can help with, by using the Registered Guilds forum, advertising their guilds in their sigs, and organising multi-guild events.
I think Gaia staff are well and truly beyond blame for inactivity. But I realise it is an issue for you, as guilds need to be justified for the resources they consume simply by existing. I don't know if any of these ideas are helpful, they're just thoughts I've had at different times, but maybe they could get some ideas flowing.
Since the users that we'd like to have in guilds more are mostly in the forums, ideas for bringing guilds and forums closer together are worth thinking about.
In terms of high conceptual ideas, I thought about ridiculously tight integration, like having a tab in each main forum to let users toggle between threads and guilds in that area. Captains could opt to have their guild listed in various forums. It would be like giant category searches. But, you guys already have the "Explore..." buttons that link to relevant guilds, and you've made those more prominent than they used to be, so you probably have this ground mostly covered.
On the other end of the spectrum are forum adjustments, like renaming Registered Guilds, and not having it as a subforum of Gaia Guilds. I used to promote the name "GGN Discussion" as an alternative, but the term GGN seems to have been dropped in favour of Guilds. This is cool, except that the term has never stopped being used for those threads in the Gaia Guilds forum, too.
So, that in itself is a problem. But ignoring that, it doesn't make sense to have RG as a subforum, because it isn't a "kind" of thread guild, like the other two subforums are.
It's also worth noting that it sticks out (for once) as being more active than either of the other subforums. The RG forum is not quite as active as other feature-based forums, like the zOMG! and Aquarium forums, but it is far more active than Gaia Fishing, which is a subforum in Gaia Gaming Discussion, with first-page topics dating back nearly three weeks. Compared to the other subforums, first-page topics in the RG forum date back about 19 hours, while first-page topics in the Organization/Military-Based Guilds subforum date back a month, and those in the Free For All subforum date back two months.
RG has been independant before, it would engage more users with guilds if it was more prominent again, and with the closure of the Captains' Guild, it makes sense to promoteit as a place for captains to talk to each other, rather than just post isolated hangout threads in the guise of advertisements.
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Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 3:22 pm
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Fashionable Businesswoman
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 1:05 pm
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wesden Amensu Saje Well wesden, I'm the current Captain of a support guild, and I'm trying to get some of my members to be more active inside the guild. Well I've found it very inconvenient when I'm trying to contact the inactive members of the guild, and I've got to send them individual PMs. I really feel that it could greatly increase use of guilds, if we could have a feature within the guild moderator panel, so that the Captain can choose which members get the announcement. And if they want all of the members to receive it, then there will be a button which can be checked that says "All". This way it knows to send it to every member. And other than that, you can go through a list and check the members you'd like to send the announcement to.
This way members that are active, aren't getting pointless announcements from the guild. But the ones that do need the announcement will receive it. I feel that every guild could be more active if a feature such as this would be created.
I know it would create a much easier way to contact the necessary members of the guild. I believe that the Captains within guilds would very much appreciate something like this. One of the reasons we created the guild announcements was to bring back inactive users. Sure, the main point is to communicate with active users, but its a great retention tool, too. Being able to select which members to send was never really on the radar, as it was meant as a guild announcement. That's not to say that one day it won't be, but the teams have moved off guilds for the time being. And as I mentioned earlier, guild usage is not as strong as we through/hoped it would be after the improvements we made so its hard to get resources back on the guilds project at the current time. Keep an eye out in the future...I hope to get back to guilds and make some improvements with the team smile 
So, why is it that guilds are being neglected so much by the staff? Is it because you don't earn cash from it? I myself rarely venture out of guilds, and I know TONS of people who use them as well. It's unfair that you guys are moving off of guilds and neglecting them when there are so many problems in them, and when it seems you are in the middle of an update that was never finished a few months ago. Why aren't guilds getting the update that forums did? Is this ever going to happen? It's as if you all like getting us excited for something, build up to it, and then disappoint us by only giving a fraction of what we were told we'd be getting.
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:04 pm
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:12 pm
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Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:01 am
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Announcements are a great feature, we've done mass PM's in the past (an RP guild, we're all friends, so we're all on each other's friend lists) but found that people would just read the PMs, reply, but never actually go to the guild.
Anyhow, I love the system. We've had a run of chaos and calamity in two of my guilds and because of the announcement system, we've been able to restore/keep things running for the most part, which I'm very glad for.
I've sent out seven or eight in total since it was released, it really only matters how important what's being talked about its, and wether or not the bulk of the people are active enough to read a thread. I found it worked for drawing the attention of people to say 'Oh yeah, I remember that guild! I should go back and see what's happening' at the very least.
Oh yes, and crew-only announcements would be great.
As far as activity goes, I think the new members are scared of guilds, honestly. It's really, really hard to recruit new people into guilds, especially RP/non-poll guilds. We've bumped our 'recruitment' thread for our guild for 30 pages worth, and I don't think a single person who's actually read it has joined. Whereas if we PM people who list roleplay as an interest in their profile, we can actually get somewhere/do something about it.
A lot of guilds 'die' because the present members stop posting/conversation dies off/rps get slow. Why? Lack of fresh blood. Bringing new people into guilds is a tough thing to do. It seems that only people who are in guilds will join more guilds, I think there's a breed of 'guild-people' on Gaia xd
Suggestion to possibly boost activity:
When searching guilds, have an 'activity tag'. It could be how many posts in the past 24hrs, how many in the past week, the time and date of the last post, or something else of the sort. More or less just so people know that there are people in the guilds actually posting, and that there's a community to talk to if they do join. A big setback for guilds is joining one and finding... no one's home. It'd help active/floundering guilds to remain active/grow if people knew that there were people to interact with inside and joined, instead of random shots in the dark.
On a side note, I love guild tags, tags are great. More of them would be even better, perhaps 'invisible' ones so a guild can have 5 main tags that everyone can see and relate to, but more than just that as well. Especially for RP guilds ;P We get pretty in-depth with plot, location, theme, et cetera.
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Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:15 am
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Excuse me for the double post, but I'd like to bring something else up: Security.
The account of the Vice-Captain for two guilds (one I'm captain, one I'm crew) was hacked. It was a personal attack, so every thread that had been posted in during the last two years was erased. Thousands of pages of literate roleplay and more than 30 threads were deleted, gone. One of the guilds was restored but the second one hasn't been, because until now we didn't know who had control of the Captain's account. It's been changed at last because of the 60day inactivity period, but we're waiting until after Final exams before we contact someone about restoration of at least the thread descriptions, and the last post of each thread.
Because of this tragedy, what I would like to see a 'Garbage' subforum that only crew can see. This would involve:
-When anyone but the captain deletes a thread, it is moved to the subforum instead of actually deleted.
-The subforum could be emptied every 7 days by default, the captain can erase threads as well. Either individually, or a mass purge?
-A notification similar to the 'new join request' that remains for the 24hrs leading up to the purge.
-Deleted posts might as well remain the same as before.
-The Captain can erase things at their leisure.
Guild backups would also be nice gonk But I realize this probably isn't possible.
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Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 1:27 pm
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Rhia-chan Excuse me for the double post, but I'd like to bring something else up: Security.
The account of the Vice-Captain for two guilds (one I'm captain, one I'm crew) was hacked. It was a personal attack, so every thread that had been posted in during the last two years was erased. Thousands of pages of literate roleplay and more than 30 threads were deleted, gone. One of the guilds was restored but the second one hasn't been, because until now we didn't know who had control of the Captain's account. It's been changed at last because of the 60day inactivity period, but we're waiting until after Final exams before we contact someone about restoration of at least the thread descriptions, and the last post of each thread.
Because of this tragedy, what I would like to see a 'Garbage' subforum that only crew can see. This would involve:
-When anyone but the captain deletes a thread, it is moved to the subforum instead of actually deleted.
-The subforum could be emptied every 7 days by default, the captain can erase threads as well. Either individually, or a mass purge?
-A notification similar to the 'new join request' that remains for the 24hrs leading up to the purge.
-Deleted posts might as well remain the same as before.
-The Captain can erase things at their leisure.
Guild backups would also be nice gonk But I realize this probably isn't possible.
Anyway good luck with the guilds. |
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Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 3:18 pm
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Ben229 Rhia-chan That is what I have in both of my guilds, only I don't erase them always. Sometimes I use it for storage when I'm remaking a guild. In any case if a guild is hacked their most likely not going to care, the forms would still be deleted even know you go to all the trouble. So it's not really a permanent solution, I say you have to have people you trust and now that the new captain rule is in affect betrayals should be much less common. Anyway good luck with the guilds.
Same with myself, I have a 'Junk' Subforum that I move everything into. The point of this is so that there's a buffer between what can be permanently erased and what can not, and that the Captain can have the final say in the matter and intervention can be done to 'save' threads and information before it becomes permanently inaccessable.
The account was hacked, it wasn't a betrayal. We've gone through the Moderators and everything has been dealt with now, the account is back in the owner's posession. But the threads are still gone, whereas as guild captain I could have saved them if there had even been a 24hr 'buffer' between deletion and... deletion.
The guild is more or less dead now, unfortunately. I might try to start it up come winter vacation, but it'll suffer again as the new semester starts sweatdrop
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Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 3:26 pm
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Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 4:51 pm
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WindowOpener Hey wesden, great to hear from you again! I think the most unfortunate thing about mass PMs is that the feature became a giant symbolic issue over the past few years. It took on importance that it didn't really deserve. Maybe the decline in guild activity has something to do with the lack of attention paid to them by staff for some years. Maybe, who knows? But I'm sure that it will take more than new interfaces and features to bring users to guilds again. I disagree with those on the previous page that say the developers simply need to do more. Yes, there is more that could be done. But it isn't the answer for bringing in more users. If all the major advances already implemented don't bring in more people, further development is unlikely to. I'm sad that mass PMs, and the other fantastic improvements, like the new Mod Panel, new Guild Registry, new member list and mass admin tools for join request queues, haven't led to a spike in guild activity. But I don't think that can be blamed on any deficiencies in the updates. I honestly don't think any adjustments would lead to such a spike - the updates were well thought out, it's now easier to browse guilds, manage members and communicate with them. Bringing more members to guilds is more of a social issue now I think. Admins didn't help when they paid the guilds not attention, but that isn't the case now, and I think Gaia will gradually come around to that. It's a process that current guild users can help with, by using the Registered Guilds forum, advertising their guilds in their sigs, and organising multi-guild events. I think Gaia staff are well and truly beyond blame for inactivity. But I realise it is an issue for you, as guilds need to be justified for the resources they consume simply by existing. I don't know if any of these ideas are helpful, they're just thoughts I've had at different times, but maybe they could get some ideas flowing. Since the users that we'd like to have in guilds more are mostly in the forums, ideas for bringing guilds and forums closer together are worth thinking about. In terms of high conceptual ideas, I thought about ridiculously tight integration, like having a tab in each main forum to let users toggle between threads and guilds in that area. Captains could opt to have their guild listed in various forums. It would be like giant category searches. But, you guys already have the "Explore..." buttons that link to relevant guilds, and you've made those more prominent than they used to be, so you probably have this ground mostly covered. On the other end of the spectrum are forum adjustments, like renaming Registered Guilds, and not having it as a subforum of Gaia Guilds. I used to promote the name "GGN Discussion" as an alternative, but the term GGN seems to have been dropped in favour of Guilds. This is cool, except that the term has never stopped being used for those threads in the Gaia Guilds forum, too. So, that in itself is a problem. But ignoring that, it doesn't make sense to have RG as a subforum, because it isn't a "kind" of thread guild, like the other two subforums are. It's also worth noting that it sticks out (for once) as being more active than either of the other subforums. The RG forum is not quite as active as other feature-based forums, like the zOMG! and Aquarium forums, but it is far more active than Gaia Fishing, which is a subforum in Gaia Gaming Discussion, with first-page topics dating back nearly three weeks. Compared to the other subforums, first-page topics in the RG forum date back about 19 hours, while first-page topics in the Organization/Military-Based Guilds subforum date back a month, and those in the Free For All subforum date back two months. RG has been independent before, it would engage more users with guilds if it was more prominent again, and with the closure of the Captains' Guild, it makes sense to promote it as a place for captains to talk to each other, rather than just post isolated hangout threads in the guise of advertisements.
sorry for the delayed response...was on vacation and catching up smile
Thanks for the feedback. If getting people to guilds is more of a social thing now, and a follow up to closer integration - I agree. I've always believed that Gaia users come here for several reasons, mainly to talk about stuff that interests them with the ability to express themselves through an avi, etc. Its really difficult to find stuff I like/interested in, and it shouldn't matter if its a forum or a guild - I'd like to see a content page for any search I do. And on that note, I will say we are updating search (within forums to start - so you can actually find stuff) and then moving on to sitewide search.
Do you think calling guilds "clubs" or "groups" would help adoption?
I agree - we should rename the forums in the guilds section and Simply Simone and I had a plan laid out earlier this year and it just kept getting bumped (reminds self to ask her again!)
ok, enough of a rant on my part! |
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Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 5:02 pm
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So, why is it that guilds are being neglected so much by the staff? Is it because you don't earn cash from it? I myself rarely venture out of guilds, and I know TONS of people who use them as well. It's unfair that you guys are moving off of guilds and neglecting them when there are so many problems in them, and when it seems you are in the middle of an update that was never finished a few months ago. Why aren't guilds getting the update that forums did? Is this ever going to happen? It's as if you all like getting us excited for something, build up to it, and then disappoint us by only giving a fraction of what we were told we'd be getting.
I appreciate your feedback, and think we did the best we could with the small team and time we had. Just a few comments...
Quote: So, why is it that guilds are being neglected so much by the staff?
guilds neglected by Gaia? We had a team spend 6 months on guilds.
Quote: Why aren't guilds getting the update that forums did?
which update is that? the guilds code is super old and the changes we made earlier this year took tons of time because of that. we only bit off a small portion of what we wanted to do because the code was so old, and we had limited time.
Quote: It's as if you all like getting us excited for something, build up to it, and then disappoint us by only giving a fraction of what we were told we'd be getting.
again. I'm not sure what we promised other than guild updates in general. I would love to have a team dedicated to guilds currently as I think guilds are the diamond in the rough here at Gaia and could use an update. However, in order to match forums functionality we would require a large project to update the backend code.
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Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 5:05 pm
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Rhia-chan Excuse me for the double post, but I'd like to bring something else up: Security.
The account of the Vice-Captain for two guilds (one I'm captain, one I'm crew) was hacked. It was a personal attack, so every thread that had been posted in during the last two years was erased. Thousands of pages of literate roleplay and more than 30 threads were deleted, gone. One of the guilds was restored but the second one hasn't been, because until now we didn't know who had control of the Captain's account. It's been changed at last because of the 60day inactivity period, but we're waiting until after Final exams before we contact someone about restoration of at least the thread descriptions, and the last post of each thread.
Because of this tragedy, what I would like to see a 'Garbage' subforum that only crew can see. This would involve:
-When anyone but the captain deletes a thread, it is moved to the subforum instead of actually deleted.
-The subforum could be emptied every 7 days by default, the captain can erase threads as well. Either individually, or a mass purge?
-A notification similar to the 'new join request' that remains for the 24hrs leading up to the purge.
-Deleted posts might as well remain the same as before.
-The Captain can erase things at their leisure.
Guild backups would also be nice gonk But I realize this probably isn't possible.
thank you, Rhia-chan. great ideas! |
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