Was spotlighting a bad thing?

[Gachetemas]

I think we had a big enough guild before the spotlighting. Now there are immigrants from who knows clamoring to get in, competing for space on the first page, and posting like they own the place! This is our guild! Tell those foreigners to go back home where people can understand them!

Seriously, I do feel a little nativist. I've been here since June, I think. But I know we were all new at some time. Maybe a bigger guild is better. We'll all have to be one happy family.  

[Sammie of Spades]

Because of spotlighting, I discovered this guild, and, I discoverd Gaia has not gone to hell in the past 4 years. I remember the first time I ever got on Gaia, I was such a noob. I made my first post with my "I"s left uncapitalized. I got bombarded by at least 15 people telling me to practice typing before I came on here unless I wanted to get flamed. crying
Since I never used Gaia much at that time, I didn't think anything of it. So now that I'm online again, I saw "txt tlk" EVERYWHERE! And my initial though was "Oh no Gaia what have they done to you!" (also noticing the very dramatic changes to the pages and to the games.)
After a day of being on I realized, Gaia didn't die on me. sweatdrop

We have refugees in the 3G! heart  

[Radio Chaos]

It can be good and bad.

For the good
Spotlighting will attract newer members, which means fewer Gaians will use "txt tlk." They will try and convince their friends to stop useing "txt tlk," and this entire site will not use "txt tlk" anymore! Which will not hurt my eyes and cost me less money on my eye drops.

For the bad
Spotlighting will let the public know about this guild. So n00bs will think it's dumb to type literally and try to report this guild. Also, some n00bs will try and join by saying they are literate typers, even if they are not. So once they are accepted, they will start a protest to say "Stop typing literally, type in 'txt tlk.' It's easier and faster and bettre than what we have here."  

[kirb-sama]

In some ways it was good, others it was bad. The good thing is it got you alot of people who actually care about grammar. (Including me) The bad things were the people who don't care about good grammar wanted to join.

By the way, can you make a topic with some of the applications? rofl

Edit: Instead of reading this look at the reasons above.  

[The Shoe Pile]

Nothing's completely good or completely bad... but I think the spolighting idea was a pretty good one.  

[ramforce]

Marcus McFlufferson

I wouldn't have known of the guild without the spotlighting.
So I obviously think it a good thing.

I was able to join because of the spotlighting.
I agree with Marcus it is a good thing but I think new members should be screened better.  

[Yokushi]

[ Pyrite ]

[x]
The guild spotlight was the best thing that happened to this guild, as far as I'm concerned. Why, you might ask?

The guild spotlight brought me here, and I'm awesome.

~Pyrite
[x]

I agree completely, because it was the same with me. Except for the 'I'm awesome' part...I am not that awesome... sweatdrop  

[Lord Himuro of darkness]

I kinda don't like it in some ways and I kinda like it for bringing me to such an awesome guild. So I guess the positives overide the drawbacks, but that's just me.  

[The MoUsY spell-checker]

Gachetemas

I think we had a big enough guild before the spotlighting.

I think that having more people won't be too much of a problem because many people join and then never post anything anyway. If you look at the member count on the front page it says 3640 (it might even have more people by the time I finish typing this, depending on whether any of the other moderators are going through applications or not), but how many of them actually post here often?

ramforce

I agree with Marcus it is a good thing but I think new members should be screened better.

Do you have any ideas on how to screen new members better then? I don't just look at the application. I check their profile and posts for a better idea of what they're likely to post. I can't think of anything else that I can do to screen new members better, although I should probably be stricter with them.

This guild gets a lot of applications. When I go to check the applications, the list often grows as I go through it.  

[Ame Yuki Kaze]

I'm doing my best to be more judicious in whom I admit. I think most of the new members have been quite good. A few haven't of course, like that guy who started trolling. But that happens in every guild, probably.

I've also started doing background checks by looking at profiles and such. Mostly though, I just go by how well made the application is and how serious they seem about joining. For the most part, it seems to work.  

[Aubrey Nicole]

This probably makes me sound like a n00b, but I have no idea how to tell that a guild is spotlighted. Where does that show up? redface  

[The MoUsY spell-checker]

dorkifiedchick

This probably makes me sound like a n00b, but I have no idea how to tell that a guild is spotlighted. Where does that show up? redface

Click the "My Gaia" link at the top of the page and then scroll down.

According to the guild spotlight, this guild has 1693 members. I wonder how long ago that was. There are 3642 at the time of this post.  

[Yokushi]

Yami no Hitokiri

[...]Mostly though, I just go by how well made the application is and how serious they seem about joining. For the most part, it seems to work.

I agree with this. If the person takes the time to submit a well written application, then clearly they like writing correctly.
In my case, I remember taking the time to write everything I felt should go there and then I read it over to make sure it was right and made sense. So, basically, as long as the screening process is done properly then spotlighting wasn't a bad thing at all.  

[Sweet Blushes]

In my opinion, it might have been a combination of both good and bad. Firstly, if there was no spotlighting, I wouldn't be here. Yet, back to the issue, there have been some who do not appreciate the guild. Hmm, but in conclusion, since the guild was spotlighted, we know that this, indeed, is a very fine guild to join.  

[MyOwnBestCritic]

The MoUsY spell-checker

According to the guild spotlight, this guild has 1693 members. I wonder how long ago that was. There are 3642 at the time of this post.

The number more than doubled! Holy crap!

And Yami... whatever happened to the abysmal, inane applications? Let's see one or two, for a laugh lol