Proposal for using guild treasure-WE HAVE AN UPDATE!!!!

[Sir Lion]

Sir Lion says that our vending guild has been waiting for guild halls in towns that you can equip like the homes, only bigger. That would use up the gold and give a nice status boost to active guilds.  

[OneOfLittleHarmony]

I vote several suggestions:

1. Make a big animated toilet and every time you flush it 25 gold goes from the guild account to a random account on Gaia.

2. Allow trading of gold in guild accounts between guilds.

3. Create an interface that allows people to take the gold and convert it into ANYTHING.

4. Allow the increasing of some aspect for some fee. Like maybe more search terms?

 

[nurmedina]

Well, here's a suggestions from me.

1)Make grounded option instead of direct ban.

2)Separate all popular guilds by their types.

3)Crews can make announcements too

4)Vice Captains can change guilds home too.

Regards,
nurmedina,
Captain of Malaysian Pride Guild (MPG)

 

[Psalm Grasshopper]

I think I put my post in the wrong place. o_o  

[kousen_katana]

What about the use of guild funds to purchase a small banner under your avi... to help advertising?  

[Nights-Rune]

I like the idea of being able to pay money from guild funds to delete subforums or be able to 'hide' them untill the guild gets big enough to warrent them...

also maybe we could pay to have decorations? Like forum backgrounds and banners and the like?  

[mamarita]

locked and now to write the proposal  

[Panagrammic]

Okay, I received the consolidated list, and have questions on some of them. My responses are BEFORE the quote. Please note I'm asking questions to understand the proposal, and not saying "yeah" or "nay" so much as trying to get a clear picture.

Responses below:

Yeah, this is a good idea.

Quote:

-Cleaning out / deleting forums in one action- actually we want to sell back forums to the bank for 1/2 price; just like we sell items back to stores. Wiping out all posts on a forum would be GREAT!. This would include the main forum.

Do you mean rearranging the list of subforums? Can you give a real-world example of when someone would use this?

Quote:

-Rearrange forums- right now we can't arrange order(.-actually you should have this programmed already but don't... just saying)

For all of this stuff, would rather spend the effort on moving to the new forum system rather than try to retrofit it into the guilds code.

Quote:

-Set up subforums with the forums

-Crew tipping posts- in fact, we want tipping of posts in guilds like in forums!!!- Actually, just enhance guilds so we can tip anyway!

-Ability to move threads on forums, and in long haul, be able to move between guilds- especially helpful on RP guilds

Customizing colors where? You already have custom banners, don't you?

Quote:

-Customizing guild banners/ colors

So, the new feature we're coming out with (Friend Chat) could potentially be added for guilds, as well. So, take a look at that feature when it comes out this week and try to think about how that could be leveraged for guilds.

Quote:

-Setting up guild hall/home in towns with access to more than 1 room and allow multiple users in at one time- it would be run similarly to the way Rally is.(This was a frequently asked option)

Not sure I understand what you mean by this -- if the guilds owns them, how are they used?

Quote:

-New shop for guilds to use to buy items for guilds- this is a biggie, we know that! It is also a good gold sink for Gaia and would have items that we could use on the guild only, We will work with you on items! We suggest Leon as the NPC for that. He used to be NPC for Captain's Guild before it closed, and we took over much of that guild's business. This goes along with the item below about how to stop abuse- only let the guild mule spend the gold. Items are soulbound to a guild and cannot be sold on Marketplace. Things could include banners, shields, awards.. things of that nature.

This would be cool. Not sure if it would get a lot of usage, though. If we did this it would show up in the guild search page.

Quote:

-Advertising- buy billboard to advertise on home pages- just one idea of advertising

Agree with this -- expenditures should be viewable by all.

Quote:

- IN ANY CASE, WE WANT THE USE OF TREASURY TO BE LOGGED AND VISIBLE TO ALL MEMBERS. Either the way it is on trade pages or under the Moderator's panel. That is a see only for anyone except C/VC/Crew and the only item on the Moderator's panel that anyone outside of crew can look at.

-Payout directly by Captain/Vice Captain for contests. Set this up on the moderator's panel the same as it is now for buying forums. We have to go there to do withdrawals and that way the log is automatically made on the crew log already in place on Gaia.

Not sure how the guild bank is different from the existing treasury?

Quote:

-Establish a guild Bank so that when donations are made to the guild, it goes to the Gaia run Bank to monitor the usage- withdrawals can be listed like on Trade pages or in the guild's homepage under the Moderator Panel. Something like this exists already where the all actions by crew are listed. So, make it visible to entire membership. Only Captain/Vice Captain/Crew can make withdrawals, and automated private message goes to Captain for each transation also

Would like to revisit this after some of the other stuff is resolved (specifically, what the heck is a guild shop for?)

Quote:

-Make the Guild Mules official. In every guild, there would be a special crew position, called Guild Mule. That account would have all the Vice Captain abilities, and the words Guild Mule showing under its name in the guild forums. And the mule's house would be the Guild house, and the mule's gold would be the guild's gold, and the mule could shop in the guild shop.

What rights would they have?

Quote:

-One thing that came up that doesn't cost gold but would help us a lot- We want to have new administrative positions created = especially helpful in RP guilds where a non-crew member can actually moderate the forum. Gaia has site/omni moderators for forums, we want them in guilds too

Why make it public then?

Quote:

-Captain can set a public guild to block outside posters.

c.f. above vis a vis Friend Chat

Quote:

-Group chats for guilds only

 

[OneOfLittleHarmony]

http://www.gaiaonline.com/friendchats/ , but using guild gold! That should solve everrrrrything.  

[one over three]

Panagrammic

Do you mean rearranging the list of subforums? Can you give a real-world example of when someone would use this?

and

For all of this stuff, would rather spend the effort on moving to the new forum system rather than try to retrofit it into the guilds code.

I know for a fact the owner of this guild recently went through and moved each individual thread out of certain subforums, into new spots, and renamed each subforum. It was her only option to reorganize things and it took at least a day's time to complete. In the B&C community at large I've heard over and over again "I wish there was some way to just move a whole subforum."

A subforum moving feature would save a lot of headache and I'm positive people would pay a moderate amount just to save time.

That being said, if you're working on bringing guilds up to the new standard code then defiantly make that a priority. Just please, please, PLEASE consider this in the future.

Panagrammic

Quote:

-One thing that came up that doesn't cost gold but would help us a lot- We want to have new administrative positions created = especially helpful in RP guilds where a non-crew member can actually moderate the forum. Gaia has site/omni moderators for forums, we want them in guilds too

This. This has come up a lot in the B&C. I wouldn't necessarily want gaia to implement new positions but for you guys the give us the ability to make our own.This is an example of the basic idea. The guild control interface from world of warcraft. Top left is the place for creating or removing new ranks, or promoting / demoting entire sections at once. the promoting / demoting is for when you want to make an entire new rank between say, officer and guild master but don't want to delete all the ranks below that to make it. New ranks always appear at the bottom, and new players are always added to the newest available rank. Top right tab is for controlling whether or not certain ranks can take items out of the guild bank. Bottom two are controlling what powers each rank has in the guild. I included the second highest rank and the lowest rank for contrast.

Obviously gaia would have different options so, for example, lets say that I'm running a role playing event with two opposing teams. Red and blue. Each team has a leader and there's a fair bit of strategy involved.

With customization I could make two subforms, red and blue, and then make four new ranks, red, blue, red leader, and blue leader. I could then set the red team to be able to view, and post in, the red subforum, but not the blue, and vice versa. I could set the leaders to be able to do the same but with the added bonus of acting as mods within their own subforms. They could add / delete / sticky etc to their hearts content without having to pester crew to do it for them, and without having any control over the rest of the guild or being able too look into the crew only sections of the guild.

This would be the kind of thing where the more options that could be given the more useful it would be for guild owners.  

[Synical]

Panagrammic

Hi, Panagrammic. So, I don't have the answers for all of those, and honestly some of them confuse me as well, but I do have some ideas that might be helpful.

You asked for a real-world example of when someone would need to be able to rearrange the list of subforums. Personally I am quite OCD and would like to be able to arrange subforums (by alphabetical order, by topic, etc) but the main reasons I can think of are these:

- Say you created a bunch of sub-forums that are open to everyone, and a bunch of Crew-Only forums, but they're all mixed in together on the list. (This would drive me insane.) Similarly, if you carefully grouped your crew forums and your open forums when you created them (as in, you listed them all first on paper or something, sorted them, and THEN actually created them), but have one more sub-forum that you added at a later date that's out of place now. It would be great if we had the ability to just sort those forums. Maybe put the open forums at the top of the list and the crew forums at the bottom, or vice versa... just some sort of system of organization to make things cleaner.

- Another is, perhaps, if you have a couple of sub-forums that are rarely accessed that happen to be at/towards the top of the list, and a couple of really active sub-forums that happen to be at/towards the bottom of the list, you can just switch those to put your most active sub-forums at the top for easier access.

There are more than likely other uses for it, but those are the ones I'm thinking about right now.

- I do agree that simply completely overhauling the guild forum system to match the current site forum system would be easier and more worthwhile than trying to fit all these new features into the older system.

- On custom colors/banners: This one confuses me. I think this might be in reference to the actual page layout, since we do have the banners already. Like, have a red and black layout instead of the standard sky blue/purple. Similar to overriding your Gaia profile, I think.

- The Guild shop confuses me as well, as I am not sure what kind of "guild specific items" we would need. What I do suggest, though, is this, which would come in handy for guild fundraising, even though it might be a slow way of accomplishing it:

Have a store on the Marketplace for each guild, just like there is for each user. Since many guilds may find no need for a store, make it an optional feature and have the guilds who do want to make use of it pay a fee. Initiate an item donation system along with the treasury so that members of the guild can donate items that will be stored within the guild, the same as when they donate gold. When the time comes, the items that have been donated can be sold in the guild store, just the same as with other Marketplace listings, only the gold that is earned from sales goes directly into the guild's treasury. (As a side note, the item donation system would also be good for guilds that do a lot of giveaways, so that they have a stash of items they can choose from. An item donation system would probably also require a trash system, just like users have, or an option to re-donate the items to the Dumpster Dive, to avoid an excess of super-low value items like recycled paper/flowers/etc, or things that were donated that the guild just can't use. And yes, I realize this would involve a massive amount of coding, but it's the best, most thorough idea I could think of for a guild shop.)

- On advertising: I think advertising on the Guild Search/Landing page would be a good idea, instead of giving all the space to the most popular guilds only. As you can imagine, it gets frustrating that the most popular guilds get all that attention because they already probably have tons of members, while struggling guilds looking for members go unnoticed because they aren't as popular, but because they aren't as popular they can't get the screen-time to attract more members to make them more popular. (A vicious cycle.)

- I do think a treasury log is a good idea, viewable by all members. I also am not sure what the difference between the existing treasury and the Bank system is, but someone else can probably explain that. I don't think crew should be able to make withdrawals though, and if they must, there needs to be a system in place where the Captain/Vice captain has to give them permission before they can. Something like a "name of the user withdrawing, number of times they can withdraw (1 for a one-time thing, something other than one if they'll have to withdraw regularly for some reason), maximum withdrawal amount" kind of thing, to prevent abuse.

- Personally my guilds don't have mules, and I think some people would find it easier to just do things from their own account than have to go through a mule... so I think any mention of mules needs to be expanded/extended to allow for the actual Captain/Vice Captain to do those same things proposed for the mule.

- On the new administrative positions: I don't think new administrative positions are needed, but it would be helpful if all users could delete their own posts or topics that they made, instead of the crew having to do it. (forgive me if one or both of these are already available; I'm Vice Captain/Crew in both of the roleplaying guilds I'm in, so the options available to me may be different from those of other users.)

- On Public guilds blocking outside members: I can see how this might be a problem. I know for a fact that there are tons of people who don't join open guilds, but just post in their forums when they're doing contests and things like that. It makes it harder on the crew to keep track of members and make sure the right people are participating in events. What I propose is to allow public guilds to have protected posts. This would mean that for the majority of the topics, anyone in the entire Gaiaverse can post, but specific topics can be set so that only members of the guild can post in them. Of course if the majority of topics are going to be protected then the guild might as well be private, but I think it's a decent middle-ground for the time being.

Eh... I know it's a bit long-winded but I tried to make my suggestions as thorough as possibly to cover every angle. Hopefully you guys will agree with me on some of this stuff, or (kindly) correct me if I got something wrong, and I apologize if I accidentally stepped on anyone's toes or anything like that. I do feel that these are necessary changes for the guilds, though, and I'd definitely like to see most, if not all of them happen.  

[Pilotslover]

The guilds NEED to be brought up to date with the rest of the site before anything else happens.

It's a bit of a joke for such a key part of the site to be years behind the rest of it. confused

I think we all appreciate by now that nothing can be done on the present antiquated system that would have any significant impact.

Out of interest, why haven't the guilds been brought up to date yet?