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Functional Guilds.

I am aware we have RP guilds and the like, but what about setting up functional guilds? Giving people jobs within the forum may help promote traffic. Examples are as follows

Tailors (Graphic Designers)

Story Tellers (RP Leaders)

Future Soldiers (Military Breeding ground)

Etc.

These guilds will serve as ACTIVE professions within the Regions operations. It will take people who are very good at certain things and teach new players how to do each thing.
So the Head of the Tailors Guild will teach new players how to make flags and banners using Graphic Design software and Storytellers will have tutorials on how to set up a good RP etc...
Let me know what you think


 

While I wouldn't mind seeing more active guilds, I believe teaching skills is what we have the Academy for (which is hardly active either right now).

Well it seemed the the skills the Academy were teaching were kind of frivolous in there course list. An a lot of the stuff does not have a bearing on the function of the Region. I figured if you get new people involved ( such as giving them a position in a Guild) Without having post restrictions or the like, we may be able to keep more people. More people feel they are cogs in the machine, more people stay because they feel important. You know what I mean?

On paper, the guilds system should be great, but in practice the only person that's really been able to do much with it is Laurentus when he was in charge of the RP guild. The recruitment guild is minimally active, and the mentoring guild never got past its first post...so before we make new guilds, we need to figure out what's wrong with the current guilds and fix those first.

Besides that, other than Stir (who has been absent the last few months), I think you're the only person in the region that dabbles in graphics.

Yeah, the guilds have not been the runaway success I had hoped they would be. My success might as well have been a happy accident, since record numbers of recruitment had been done, and unbeknownst to me, a lot of people eager to RP had joined the forums and were merely waiting for someone to give them a place to get started. It required a lot of effort on my part.

At the end of the day, the idea didn't overcome the fatal flaw of the entire region: we rely on a few dedicated individuals to blaze the trail and set the example, and most people don't have the drive to become trailblazers themselves, even though we have many highly skilled people on the forums. We might just be too laid-back as a community. To try and change that could destroy what people like about the region in the first place.

That said, the idea behind guilds is that anyone who feels he has something to contribute can start his own guild, with full ministry support, so if you'd like to try your hand at running any of the guilds you've just proposed, not only won't you face resistance, I'd like you to know you have my full support!

But to some extent we have to change that, or we risk becoming stagnant and slowly dying out. The problem is worse than I thought...we not only rely on a few individuals to do the manual work of the region and to think up and do new activities, we literally rely on those people to even start new conversations. How much effort does it really take to think of something new to post about to discuss? I know I try to constantly think up things, which is partially why I've started four times the number of topics as the next highest topic starter, Chanku. Hell, Denth Kasten is still the number four topic starter, and he hasn't even been here in a year and a half.

I will admit that it's partially my fault...as I said in the State of the Region address, I've allowed this to go on in the Executive government, and in doing so I've set a poor example to the rest of the region that betrays our meritocratic ideals: that you don't have to do anything to hold a prominent status in the region. I'm in the process of working on that, and I'm reassessing what I do so that I support the people doing things for the region first and foremost...for example, Emoticonius and his puzzles that have revived our embassies and given Wintreath a lot of good attention in other regions.

To that end, I would suggest just taking the lead in anything you want to do if nobody is currently doing it. I don't think you need a formal guild to do that...just do it, and if it gets others involved then we can formalize it as a guild.

Well, thats kind of the point isnt it? I want to give something to new comers that gives them a sense of belonging. The current Guild system doesn't do that. But with this New idea, I would give people something to be proud of in works and rank. A small status symbol, but one nonetheless. We take mentors in certain fields (to be discussed at a later date) and place them with new comers. The mentors will be given the title Guild Master and set up instruction and tests, and the newcomers can work up in rank like a normal trade. Apprentice, Jouneyman, Master, Guild Master. This gives them immediate Investment into the region. Helps them interact directly with the day to day operations of the forum. Of course this is NOT a guaranteed success. Its just a theory.

That is actually exactly what the current guilds idea is supposed to do. Take a look at the ranks of the RP Guild.

Well yes it may be similar but there will be a couple of changes. Have people masked as Guildmasters, Jouneymen, Apprentices, and (insert neophite name here). The Guilds would have there own main forum section on the first page. So it has easy access for new people.
I think that may be part of the problem. Do you know how deep into the forums you have to get to find the Guilds? And there not even in the same place. So each individual guild had to be searched out separately. This is highly inefficient AND i would blame at least fifty percent of the guilds failure on that alone. 

So... you want to take the RP Guild away from the actual RP area? It's in its own sub-forum clearly marked The Roleplayers Guild...

Im simply saying that we should be taking all these things and thinking about them in a different way. Yes, it does seem a bit silly to take the RP guild out of the RP forum but i think it would be a benefit in the long run. Put them all in one forum, a Guild Hall and then people will be able to find it efficiently and learn to participate.

It actually used to be like that, but the RP guild requested to be moved to where it is now.

So I'll be looking at this discussion with great interest to see how it goes.

Also having a background page with what your guild hall looks like and things like that (RPing some of it out a little bit) I just think that it would be more interactive that way and because of that the Guilds would be more productive, and attractive.

Yeah, I'm thinking that if we try to integrate the guilds into the forum more, then it might help try to get people to join. I'd agree with Keelen's idea of updating and sprucing up the guilds' pages (I understand this would be each guilds' responsibility). But also putting all of the guilds into one guild sub-area so people can see exactly what is available to join (I think Keelen said this, too ).

Also maybe (and I know this could be a bit of work) adding badges or flairs that show which guilds people are in and their ranks or something like that. I think small pictures would be better than just text (think of the factions in Oblivion), which would also be the responsibility of the guilds to create. Just something to make it more apparent of their existence and to show what you can work towards and show off.

Unfortunately, we don't have many graphics wizards here.

Also, when the RP Guild started, we weren't just using it for guild related stuff. At the time, there was nowhere else to actually RP, so we used it for that as well, which got messy very quickly.

Add to that the fact that interest threads still happen in the guild itself, and it would be even more confusing for newcomers, I should think, if they're seeing all these interest threads that aren't anywhere near the place where they would eventually hold the RP itself if enough people show interest.

What I do think we could do is have one common forum where links are given to each guild, and where the representatives from each guild have to be active and represent their guild through answering any miscellaneous questions about them. Something like a Guild Registry and FAQ section. So if someone wonders what guilds we currently have that are active, there's an easy place for them to see it and interact with the guilds before they might necessarily be ready to take the plunge and join.

And this could also be a place where progress reports are made of what each guild has been doing, what challenges they've faced, what successes they've reached and so forth.