Suggestions for dev on specific areas for improvement

[lily564a]

autoaccept join requests + spam filter

at the SDRP we take everybody who isn't mean or spam, and while there's no realistic way to detect meanness there's no reason there couldn't be spam blocking, then accept everybody else; we'll deal with the after effects as they show up.

Maybe toss in actual forms and minimum content  

[Slytherin Lord]

i like windowopener's idea he made in his thread in this guild.  

[Tohru Elizabeth Honda]

Ailinea

I had a few suggestions and comments, not sure how easy they are to be implemented or if they've been suggested before.

Back a long time ago, we used to be able to buy ads that would show up on the forum homepage. All the guilds I bought two week ads for had a HUGE surge of requests to join. That was by the single most effective way I've ever seen to get guild members. I would really like to see that feature back.

This is more of a laziness issue I suppose, but I really liked it when I accepted someone to join that it would just take out the name and move to the next person. Now when I accept a join request, I have to hit the back button to accept the next person. It was a lot nicer the old way.

Some really cool features like the mass PM system that you can send to all of your members (only through the captain, and would cost a fee to prevent PM spam from some irresponsible guild captain/mods). Also, something like a title system that members can achieve when they reach a certain amount of posts in the guild. Captains can give rewards to people who reach a certain status, and maybe a little mini announcement system that says something like "Ailinea just reached the Platinum Title!" so other guild members can congratulate her.

I like the idea suggested previously about being able to see how active members are by seeing when they last posted, when they joined, etc.

I'm not too sure about the quests... some people just like to join a guild and be done with it. I think the whole request to join with an application some guilds do is enough to tell whether or not a potential member has read what he or she needs to read. A long process to join a guild might be a turn-off to some people.

I also like the idea of the guild page loading matches of guilds to a person's list of interests.

I might add more later. smile

the green i dont like the way it is now either its too much work and its not laziness its just for more convenience during beta i just stopped accepting ppl all together cause it was too much work to keep up to (i made a guild in the beta-site) so bring that back would be nice

as for the red that is what i meant a mass PM system would be very nice and very much appreciated i believe but it would be good if the captain and VC's would be the only ones to use that system ( i say that cause like in SHB I am a VC and i am more active than our new captain so i offer to do loads of stuff for her) this feature should probably be added in the guild members section a tab that says private message members then when pressed it check boxes can come up next to each members name and from there you can choose which members you want to message and if you want to pm all of the guild members just have a box that says pm all members on the top of the names... once you are done choosing members click on a Done button at the bottom of each page and and then that would take you to the place where you can type what you want to pm to everyone..... that would seem very convenient  

[MrsMica]

too2sweet

It would also be nice if we could customize the "acceptance" letter that is automatically sent out when someone joins the guild. As it is right now I have to go in an send a separtate "Welcome" letter, that has new member info in it.

I can see two ways of doing this;
1) we can customize a template/form letter that is sent to every member
2) we can individually add text when accepting a person

I'd prefer a form letter. If I want to say something individualized to a new member, I can PM them separately myself.

As for member activity -- I'd like it if the members list showed when they joined and their last post. Bonus points if it could be organized to show newest/oldest members, most/fewest posts, newests/oldests posts, and alphabetical member names. Currently it is impossible for us, as a large guild, to clean up our members lists of inactive members.  

[too2sweet]

Quote:

As for member activity -- I'd like it if the members list showed when they joined and their last post. Bonus points if it could be organized to show newest/oldest members, most/fewest posts, newests/oldests posts, and alphabetical member names. Currently it is impossible for us, as a large guild, to clean up our members lists of inactive members.

oh, yes...please!!!  

[The Lovely 86]

I don't know if this has been mentioned here already or not, and I'm to lazy to look back, but I'd like more uses for guild gold! Right now we can only buy new sub-forums with it, and what happens if people donate to your guild and you don't want or need any more subforums?

I think it might be nice to have possiably a special shop where you could get prizes for contests that are held in the guild, or even if we could use that money in already existing stores. And as for sending the prizes, it would be like the gift giving system.  

[MrsMica]

I wish I could turn off guild donations!  

[OneOfLittleHarmony]

Make the pages of the memberlists, where it shows the members longer. Like maybe 100 members to a page or something instead of the 15 or whatever it is at now. And a more logical order for the guild's member list? I suspect DARKNRGY did that for a reason, but it's unknown to me.  

[Tohru Elizabeth Honda]

too2sweet

Quote:

As for member activity -- I'd like it if the members list showed when they joined and their last post. Bonus points if it could be organized to show newest/oldest members, most/fewest posts, newests/oldests posts, and alphabetical member names. Currently it is impossible for us, as a large guild, to clean up our members lists of inactive members.

oh, yes...please!!!

i too think this would be an awesome idea ( i third this motion)  

[Tohru Elizabeth Honda]

OneOfLittleHarmony

Make the pages of the memberlists, where it shows the members longer. Like maybe 100 members to a page or something instead of the 15 or whatever it is at now. And a more logical order for the guild's member list? I suspect DARKNRGY did that for a reason, but it's unknown to me.

i second this motion.... only because i went back to the member's list to try and get all the names of the members to pm all of them and once i got to page 16 or so it started repeating names when i pressed names so it gave me more pages than there actually were  

[WindowOpener]

Nice to meet you, grace. smile Thanks for taking the time to look around here, and ask us directly for input!

1) Features that help Guild owners recruit more members. For example, as a Harry Potter guild owner, would you like to be notified of users identifying Harry Potter as one of their interests and be able to send them an invite?

Some way for guild recruiters to be able to exploit the Interests feature would be fantastic! This would compliment other much-requested features to make it easier for members to find guilds, e.g. tags.

Personally in this area I'm most keen to see the guilds integrated more with the forums as well. For example, the existing "Explore guilds in..." box in most discussion forums is a simple feature that could be expanded to be more specific, or even added to threads. I once had a dream for having each forum page actually turned into a tab, and another tab beside it labelled Guilds that showed relevant guilds - a bit of a pie in the sky, but maybe you guys can think of a cool way to spin it.

too2sweet also touched on a great way to extend your example: the guilds registry page could really use a revamp that fleshes out the GGN, like Marketplace 3 did for the vend. A panel somewhere that shows guilds targeted to the viewer's interests would be very cool.

2) Features that ease the Guild joining process. Currently, there is a time lag for applications to be accepted. I saw a good suggestion here about having a trial period for new members. Are there other ideas along the same vein?

Multiple accepts/declines would be helpful for Crews that have to process longer lists of join requests. Additional info appearing automatically alongside each requests, such as that member's join date, total post count, other guilds... might be useful for guilds that like to check those things anyway (e.g. the GGN Moderators' Guild has a requirement that all members are Crew or above in another guild).

Many guilds have introduction stickies. Maybe a script could search the guild for a thread likely to be the intro sticky, and if found, the new member could be prompted to post there?

Many guilds also offer small prizes for recruiting members, either on a constant basis or through periodical contests. Some way to allow captains to automate this a little more, even to the point of having a text field in the join request for users to say who invited them or how they heard about the guild would be cool.

Regarding invitations, declines etc. it would be great if regular Gaians had more ways to manage what messages they receive (e.g. a link on each invitation to "Never receive invitations from this guild again"; a blacklist that can be managed in profile options; options for what kinds of messages to receive after mass PMs are introduced). I've suggested in the past that a whole new Guildbox be set up to take the strain off PM inboxes for Gaians who are members of many guilds - this could be an issue after mass PMs come in, and I'd prefer to see members given the option of managing the flow of communication rather than any fancy restraints on how often guilds can send PMs out.

3) Features that help new members engage with the Guild. Posting for the first time in a Guild can be intimidating. What sorts of activities do you think a new member could easily contribute to? E.g., opinion polls, quizzes that could be highlighted in a central place?

You're entirely right in identifying this as a key area that lets some guilds down! It has always been up to the vibrant guild community to extend its own hand and give its toothiest grin to new members, but it is tough and there's only so much the existing members can do. I don't think there's a silver bullet for converting all new members into active long-term ones, and the nature of the medium is people often join guilds with no intention of sticking around to post.

There are some good thread ideas that have become standards, though, like birthdays, intros, post your picture, weekly polls, TPAM games, Q&As and others. I'll... elaborate on these in a sec!

4) Features that help a Guild stay active. Currently a lot of the burden falls on the Guild owner to organize interesting and relevant activities. What incentives can we give members to stay active and help the Guild owners grow the Guild? For example, what if the most active Guilds unlocked levels of cool features like new backgrounds or post styles for their Guild?

One thing that sometimes makes guilds look more dead than they are is housekeeping clutter, like directories, banner graphic stickies and feedback stickies, in addition to stickies targeted at new members, in addition to regular stickies and announcements like the main Gaia forums use for rules and news.

On the clutter front, guilds are a bit disadvantaged.

Many captains combat this by lumping some info together in the same sticky, using one announcement for all news, relegating some threads to subforums and cutting others altogether. It's a lot of compromise, and I wonder if there is some way to avoid it?

Maybe some of these threads could be given a designation other than Sticky/Announcement? Or there could be a primary and secondary Main Forum, and captains could designate some of these threads to a portion that is displayed at the top of the page by default, but is minimisable?

Also, since these threads are established standards, maybe new guilds could be given the option of having them created automatically, or at least suggested during the creation process? E.g. captains are shown a list with a checkbox beside each idea they can choose to implement.

Just throwing ideas out here. xD

I think more ways for guilds to interact and network (e.g. an affiliates networking feature) would benefit guilds by providing new ways for members to engage with the guild.

I'm not a fan of the idea of unlocking features - I'm used to a GGN that has always had all features available to everyone, and I even think guild gold should only be used for novelty features and never for administrative ones (like subforums or mass PMs). While of course I hope captains never have the power to withdraw guild funds, it would be good to see more features available to them to give fun stuff back to their members. An internal contest system is one obvious idea since so many captains use a mule to offer this already, which is a convoluted workaround that requires significant member trust (and effort).

In other words, I'd love just-for-fun uses of guild gold introduced (yes, why not some background themes and posting styles?). I'd also love some administrative tweaks that help reduce clutter without forcing popular threads to be canned, and that are freely available to everyone.

What if you didn't earn gold in a guild, but earned a special guild currency instead? Giving you access to exclusive GGN items, either for your avatar or for the guild? I don't know, probably complicated enough to be slotted away until GGN 4, since we already have Gold, Cash, Credits, Coupons and Bachelors anyway.

...That's it for the time being. whee I agree with pretty much everything else that others have suggested already in this thread as well! Thanks again for keeping in touch with us. <3  

[too2sweet]

Sorry...adding a few things as I think of them (not sure if they've been said already or not).

Being able to sell back sub-forums (even if it was at 1/2 price), or even just being able to delete them (or make them invisible).  

[Tohru Elizabeth Honda]

@ too2sweet- hmmm.... now that i think about that i think that would be a cool feature to add xd im not following anyone just trying to state my opinion maybe if more than one ppl like it they might be more inclined of trying it out  

[too2sweet]

Also if there was anyway to do captain/crew post style that would only activate if you are a crew/captain. Even just a generic one that would have a special boarder that says "Notes From the Crew" or something similar. So that if we are in a thread and need to make an "official" post, members would know that it was from the Crew and not some random member (being able to use it in PM's would be awesome as well, but probably not an option).

I say this because it was mentioned recently in one of the guilds I am in that our captain sent a member a warning about something and they ignored it thinking she was just a regular member.