|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 5:16 pm
Hi everyone,
I work at Gaia on the product management team and have been tasked with looking at features that would improve the guilds. Pirula, who sits a few steps away from me, told me about this guild and I was excited to post here to get your feedback.
I read through a few of feature suggestion threads here and thought there were really good suggestions in there. I'm looking for more ideas that address the following issues I'm trying to resolve. At risk of asking you to repeat yourselves, could you please contribute suggestions in these categories?
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?
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?
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?
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?
Thanks a lot in advance for your thoughts. I look forward to reading them!
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 12:26 pm
Hi grace...
Thanks for checking us out!
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? That sounds like a really good idea. Right now we either have to rely on randomly seeing people in a forum, actively search for those with similar interest, or hope that they search for us. So being notified would be really great. Not sure about coding issues, but if there was a way that when someone clicked on the guild registry page, that it would automatically show guilds relevant to their interests. Also allowing captains to add search terms to their guilds settings, so that you don't have to have to add search terms to the title of your guild. Would make it a lot easier for people to find us.
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? I wouldn't necessarily need trial periods (though I'm sure it would be good for some especially if they have higher entry fees). But if you have a list of user waiting to be accepted it would be really great if you would just be able to "select all" and then accept them, instead of having to accept each one individually. Oh...and if they could fix the acceptance letter glitch, that would be really great. Currently when a new member gets their automatic "you have been accepted to the guild" letter...it says "you have been declined". Not a good way to encourage active members. gonk Also the "home page" spacing glitch...there are random spaces being added to the code, which makes the guilds look very unprofessional...and might keep members from wanting to join.
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? In my guilds have threads for introductions, birthdays, plus some general opinion threads that aren't so intimidating. We try to put info on the "home page" that let our members know that it is ok to post and ask questions.
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? I think any features should be available to all guilds. That could be something that we could use our guild accounts for. Mass PMing would be a huge help (or a way to send an announcement to all guild members). GIM doesn't really help, because if a member isn't on then they don't get the message. It is nice when you want to chat with multiple members though. As far as incentives to be active and help grow the guild. Maybe extra gold for posts that are made in a guild, or some sort of recruiting reward system. Maybe if when the guild home page is updated it posts it shows up on a member's "my gaia" page. Also the possiblity of guild only quests...something that captains could set the conditions for and use the guild accounts to pay prizes to those who complete the quest (great for new guild members to learn about the different areas of the guild).
Other: Something else that would be really useful is that when you look up guild members if captains/crew could be able to see when the person joined the guild, when they lasted posted in the guild and/or visited the guild (and possibly the last time they were on Gaia). Right now (especially since we can't do mass PMs) it's hard to keep members updated on guild happenings. If we can see who hasn't been around in awhile then we would know who to send messages to.
That's all I can think of for now. Thanks again for listening to our input.
biggrin
P.S...I've also include links to other threads you may find useful (though you've probably already seen them)
http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewtopic.php?t=13654823
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/site-feedback/gaia-guild-updates-a-complilation-thread/t.41180433/ (in the main forums)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:20 pm
well first of all thanks for asking this... i was just asking for help about 2months ago but found no result hopefully you can help
WAYS TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR C'S AND VC'S TO COMMUNICATE WITH EVERY MEMBER OF THE GUILD... during the beta zomg i received notifications of events... i would think that having something like that... im sure guilds have parties and would like to let every one know the day it comes around and sending one pm at a time is time consuming being able to send notifications to all members would help a lot and let members know of current event
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 4:24 pm
Hiyas yourself (:
I'm glad good news is being spread about the guild! I think we're even more excited that you want our feedback XD
1) I don't know how much I'd like to be notified as I'd prefer to be able to go to a page and view a list of people with similar interests.
There should be more than one way to navigate the Registry, like the MP. You should be able to navigate it by interest, guild ID, newest guilds, oldest guilds, largest guilds, etc.
I'll right more when I remember more of my previous ideas.
2) Really? I haven't noticed any time lags.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean sweatdrop Although I do partly agree with too2sweet. It'd be neat if there were several ways to accept members, sort of like the mailbox. I'd love to have an option where you could just set it so upon sending an invite you're automatically accepted into the guild. It would also be neat if there were check boxes next to each join request instead of "accept/decline" and you could click on some of them and press "accept" or "decline" or like too2sweet said, you could click on "mark all" and then "accept" or "decline".
It would be great if we could write our own messages for when we accept or decline people in addition to just sending them the usual automatic message they get. Some people don't know what to do exactly after they join a guild and others don't know why there were declined.
@too2sweet
I think they fixed that glitch a few weeks ago
3) A guild quest. I remember my first time joining a guild and I had no idea what to do and I was scared to post. I don't know if this should be done when someone first joins Gaia (I don't remember if guilds were mentioned at all when Moira was giving me a tour), but if it's done when someone joins a guild, I think it should follow a format that the Captain is allowed to adjust to his guild's purpose.
Using this guild would be a bad example since everyone here has had experience with guilds, so I'll use another guild of mine, The Lounge, as an example:
Bob just joined The Lounge and it's his first guild. A new quest notification pops up on his screen. Bob reads the fancy introduction and then as the first step of the quest, it asks Bob to post (or introduce himself) in the [I get to insert a link and title to the thread I want Bob to post in] "Introduce yourself" thread. Then Bob returns to the quest page and next I ask him to make another post in [Insert link/title] "Rules" thread (and in my rules thread at the bottom of the post I'd ask him to mention he read and understands the rules in his post). Bob returns to the quest page hopefully feeling a little better about the guild now. After the NPC (or maybe I) congratulates him on making it so far, I'll have him explore the forums next and provide with him a picture that explains the difference between a forum and a sub-forum and shows where each is located and ask him to post in an X number of subs maybe. Then he returns again and to get his prize for finishing the quest, I ask him to make a thread in the guild.
It's sketchy, but I hope you understand what I'm saying.
4) New backgrounds and post styles would be awesome! We definitely need an efficient way of notifying all the members of some event (if there's a concern for Captain's abusing mass PMs, I have two arguments on it:
First, if a Captain abuses mass PMs, are the members really going to stick around the guild? Secondly, it could be set so that mass PMs don't get sent to members with an X amount of posts or/and members that haven't posted in X weeks...the major need for mass PMing is to notify all inactive members of something).
Guilds should automatically have their own rooms in games. Since you can't name game rooms anymore and you never know what you will find when you enter a game room now, I think it would be a pleasant feeling to see an option to look at whichever of your guilds have a room(s) set up.
I'll post more ideas as I think of them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 4:28 pm
This doesn't really fall under features, but, another way to help members keep in touch with their guild would be to link the "Guild" tab under Community to a page that actually explains what guilds are, has a link to the GGN FAQ, has a link to the Registered Guilds and Guilds forums, has a link to making a guild, and has a link that gives you mini feeds of what's happening in your guild(s). And this idea is completely sketchy, but Gaia doesn't seem to emphasize guilds too much, although I'm hoping that will change with this update.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 9:10 pm
Thank you for your feedback. I just wanted to let you know that we truly value your input. Trust me, we are combing through this thread and other similar ones and taking notes. smile Please keep your ideas coming!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 10:07 am
simplified idea; advanced homepages, like the user profiles but better
One thing that I thing would definitely help members stay involved and mods stay in touch would be if the home page was rebuilt to be more like the profiles, or preferably one of the more popular CMS systems available, such as Joomla, with features such as dynamic content, say for instance a box that displaces the most recent announcements or reads from a special type of thread to quickly display the newest stuff, maybe a box that cycles through 'ads' the guild as set up to hype areas of the guild, for this guild we might make an ad for the market, and include a link to a FAQ, for a different sort of guild you might run ads for major threads or events; then of course a box that displays active or lurking members, and maybe go so far as to make a GIM box pointed at a guild specific chat room; but all that would come after the basic structure of course.
Edit:
simplified idea; guilds/mainforums integration
Since there's work being done on the framework of the guilds now's a good time for this one, most guilds start as a thread in the main forums, then after the guild starts the best they can do to continue that initial thread is copy stuff over, often far too much to get any where close to all of it. So what if we could somehow consume, or even just copy threads over, it'd be coolest if the threads were merged to exist in both forums actively with out clones but that sounds like it would take a good bit of work on both sides, and would demand that threads have publicity control (hidden, private, public), which would be nice but is fairly low on my list of requests.
Similarly many guilds run events for the specific purpose of attracting (and maintaining) members. in the few events I've participated in we just made threads in the main forum and went from there, but if there were some way to 'publish' a thread in a guild onto the main forum, in such a way that the same thread existed in both, it would be easier to get/keep members in the guild involved as they wouldn't have to follow a link in a thread, and would be able to see new posts without leaving the guild and lurking the main forums, or refreshing whatever mainforum forum the thread is in; which would also enhance the representative environment the event is trying to present to potential members.
Plus such a merger could be set up so when a crew publishes or consumes a thread they retain/gain the administrative rights they would have if it only existed in the guild
reedit: taking that idea a step further, maybe have it so we can consume/publish threads between guilds; SDRP has been the birthplace of several RPs that grew to guild level, no reason they shouldn't get to keep their threads just like if they had done them in barton
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 5:55 pm
Quote: @too2sweet I think they fixed that glitch a few weeks ago Thanks! I found out yesterday from a new member that the "acceptance letter" thing has been fixed, but the "home page" glitches are still an issue. gonk
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:52 pm
I've been doing more thinking and I'd kind of like to replace my original thoughts with this one:
Gaia needs to put a greater emphasis on guilds. Unless I skipped it, I don't remember Gaia mentioning anything about guilds when I first joined in December 06. There definitely needs to be a quest or series of quests for guilds that the Captain can format as he likes.
And I can't draw, so I'll use words to give an image of how the quest format should look like so to say:
Title- Fresh meat aye?
Introduction/Step 1 of quest- Welcome to the CG 2.0...blah blah...Let's see if you know the rules...
Reward- You're now an official member of the guild!!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moderator Panel -> Edit Quest settings
Quest Title: Hey bud^^
Number of steps (note the introduction counts as the first step): 5
Submit Information
New page loads
Title: Hey bud^^
Introduction/ Step 1: asfsfhgadsfhasgsadf
Preceded by 4 more field boxes for the steps
Reward: You passed the trial period! You're an official member of the guild!!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If Gaia placed a greater emphasis on guilds, when people join Gaia, it would help all guild owners. I only learned about guilds a little over a year ago because a friend invited me to one.
If the "guild" tab under "Community" took you to a serious page that had links to the Registry, GGN FAQ, creating guilds, and other guild-related links, that would help as well. I know there's a page somewhere that shows members that just joined Gaia and a page that shows new journal entries...well if a serious page for guilds were designed, it should also include a section that shows guilds that were recently created.
I say recent for a reason. It makes little sense to display a guild that was just made two seconds ago. The guilds that would be displayed in that section should be fully set up with a banner and at least one sticky or announcement in there. And a way to help control that element would be if two or so days after a guild was made, a PM or notification was sent to the owner asking if he'd like his guild to be displayed in that section and if he does, then he needs to provide the link for his guilds current banner and the link to a sticky or announcement and somehow the NPC that sent the PM can automatically screen his guild to make sure it is set up. That would help to keep that "guild preview" section free of spam and help people that are serious with their guilds.
Guild quests would help get new members and first time members situated with guilds. There could be an option set where if you clicked yes on it, then if a new member fails to complete the quest within a limited amount of time (and the person would have to complete the quest before being able to roam about the guild freely), then he/she automatically gets booted from the guild. That would help to keep guilds from gaining trollers/spammers/ people that are never going to post.
So to re-answer these in short:
1) Features that help Guild owners recruit more members. Gaia placing a greater emphasis on guilds and a "guild preview" section. As Captains, we already have all the necessary tools -R&G and Guilds forums, searching users by interest, sigs, PMs, etc- but how many people know about guilds or what they even are?
2) Features that ease the Guild joining process. Guild quests would benefit both, the current members of the guild and the person just joining.
3) Features that help new members engage with the Guild. Same as 2
4) Features that help a Guild stay active. I think this is really the Captain's job. It's the Captain's responsibility to know how to attract members and to keep the ones he already has. To my understanding guilds essentially exist because Gaia can't have a forum for every single topic on earth and if people are going to run forums, they should know or learn to know what the job takes.
So overall, it would help if guilds were brought up more on Gaia, like maybe they could play a role in some of Gaia's events.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:52 pm
To help ease the joining process; auto accept with a spam filter
Add to that the option to replace 'join requests' with 'first posts', instead of the join request page you get a Post a Reply page, maybe a minimum post length and a post template. If what they submit is deemed not-spam they will be granted membership and the post will be put into a thread specified in the mod panel, maybe a choice of threads but that seems like it would just unnecessarily complicate things. So the moment they've joined they've also entered into the community.
simplified idea: crew assistants
(jump to the last paragraph if you want)
you didn't list it but it seems like ideas that would help the mods moderate would also aid in activity; Assistants, like crew but a notch lower on the totem pole. Assistants would inherit their rights from the crew member that 'hired' them, minus whatever the crew member thinks they shouldn't need. Things to toss out would be stuff like join requests, delete threads, banning members. Mostly this idea works on the requested feature of specific rights; instead of every crew member being equal each is given a jurisdiction of subforums. Say I had jurisdiction over an RP subforum and things were really taking off, I might want to bring on one of the more active or trustworthy members as an Assistant, I'd only want them to be able to lock and edit threads, delete and edit posts, and suspend members ability to post in the jurisdiction; but say I have rights over several subforums I could also limit him to just the one I want help with.
Since Assistants would have rights above the level of member they should still be confirmed with the captains; maybe offer a vote option so say the cap's busy or dead, if so many of the other mods agree that this person is trustworthy he gets the job. So it would go something like this
I'm over burdened but not enough to justify a whole 'nother crew member. Jake hangs out in the area I need help with a lot, and does his best to help the area already. I go to the mod page, click something like "Request Assistant", and am presented with a page that contains fields like "assistant's username", "proposed rights", "jurisdiction", and maybe "reason", I fill it out and submit. The captain(s) are sent a PM, to assure they respond as quickly as possible. if they don't respond within so long it drops to a vote between the crew, let's say they vote yes, now I've got an assistant.
Of course at any time the captain could overrule the vote, or change his mind if they said yes, and just as they were instated, if another crew member things the assistant is behaving inappropriately they can submit a request to have them removed, and it'd go through the same sequence, only faster. The original crew member to request the assistant would be able to 'fire' them at any point.
For the vote, since it's mainly to prevent a dead captain from interrupting the operations of the guild it should be yes votes vs no votes, instead of yes votes vs not yes votes; 7 crew, three yes, 2 no, 2 non-responders; the way I would make it the assistant gets hired, the other it doesn't.
It would also provide a trial basis for potential crew members.
I didn't expect to write that much...
Guild Quests would definitely help get/keep people involved, but how could you make it have actual rewards, membership is good for one, maybe at some point you could earn crests or membership in groups. But if you tried to do items, even if you just specified the item and had it auto-bought when somebody completed the quest, what if the guild went broke? maybe set it up so the first X completions get Y prize, the second X get Z prize, and everybody else gets a crest, but that's probably not going to be taken well; though it could be used to encourage people to donate, the more money the guild has the more people can get the prizes
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 12:04 am
Goshdangit! Let me preview my homepage before I post it! stressed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:30 pm
Different...Very. Let me preview my homepage before I post it! stressed Yes...that would be delightful indeed!!!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:49 am
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
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 8:28 am
Ailinea 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. That's an awesome idea! I'd defintly use that one. ^_^
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 4:20 am
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
