Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'll ask him.
From the looks of it Window, hasn't logged in since the 29th of August. I've sent him and a few other mods a PM as well. If they're never going to use the guild again, they really should just ought to hand it over to someone else.
All part of the plan. I'd like to start this version with an established crew.
I PMed her and she's busy with things for the moment. She sent me an automatic PM that had nothing to do with the CG.

I'm hoping to make this version sort of like a training ground for new Captains. Make this a little stricter than the CG.

I'm flattered I was mentioned as a recognizable name.

Oh man, I'm pissed off. I can't find answers anywhere now, or anywhere to post actual questions and expect to have any kind of intelligent response within a week on Gaia now.

Just copying the old stickies into the RG would have been good, but yeah. Nothing.

Yes. Absolutely.

We can all subscribe to it and just be committed to bumping it once a day each.

Another thought, Shouldn't the Guides be stickies? I hate a lot of stickies, but I think they'd look better up there =P

Having all the guides in one sticky and just having the 1st post being a directory I think would be nifty too (or is that what you meant? haha)

The admins and users both suck.

• The CG is the only place where GGN discussion has ever consistently taken place, but it was closed - without discussion - but with the promise of an adapted Registered Guilds. Registered Guilds was adapted into a subforum, but that's all.
  
  
• The users were given Registered Guilds three years ago with the wonderfully flexible guidelines that allowed GGN discussion, advertising/recruitment and guild buy/sell/services threads. But when the CG closed, instead of using this forum, we splintered into two spin-off guilds (not including this delightful one) and Registered Guilds is still overrun with ads.

Ever since mass PMs were mentioned (in September 2005) in the GGN FAQ as expected "in October or even later," we have slipped into the very easy pattern of complaining. (Yes, I've often helped.) But we are completely in this together with the admins. The CG was not such a rubbish place that it deserved closing, but nor was it a glowing example of captains working constructively to help each other and share GGN and guild-leading knowledge.

Moderators should have been more active in removing spam, but in the absence of a report system, where were the PM reports? I received two in my most recent twelve months of modding.

This may sound elitist, but there were so many substandard user-made guides made more to establish their authors' statuses than to genuinely offer help, which would have gone further by replying specifically to threads in the Guild Discussion forum.

And what about that forum? I pushed for it in the 2006 reformat, and while it served as a (very quiet) Q&A sometimes, it was rarely used for actual collaboration or discussion of guild leadership.

The CG always lacked energy. It was never authentically passionate about anything, except guild updates. It should have been passionate about captaining.

It's no wonder the pushes by the remaining GGN mods for subforums in RG have not been realised, let alone my specific wish for a "Guild Leading" one for captains - where's the evidence to show the staff that captains want this?

Do they want this?

The CG didn't achieve it, and RG has not achieved it so far, either. (Time to break through the deluge of ads, guys.)

Even as the CG closed, the (mild) backlash was more due to the loss of a hangout than a productive, constructive forum. We miss its social aspects the most. I value socialising as much as anybody, and I loved hanging out with the captains there, but it is not what the CG was for.

There's nothing wrong with having forum regulars. Every forum does. The CG was just too much a hangout and not enough captaining discussion.

Second to chat threads came questions about using the GGN - ones that could be answered by referring to the stickies, or asking in Gaia Q&A instead.

I would not have argued for the CG's deactivation, unless a variety of other adjustments were made, preferably beforehand. But with a bit of empathy, we can appreciate how the already stretched staff team decided to cut it loose.

The alternative would be to try to turn the CG around into a productive, constructive, indispensible discussion forum for guild leaders, but frankly I never saw a staffer genuinely enthusiastic about the CG, let alone someone with the motivation to turn it around.

(And it would take a staffer, or some motivated new presence in the guild of some kind, because the CG was not turning around by itself.)

So it was closed, and we're complaining again about how hard done by we are.

With the splinter guilds like this one, the challenge is to do more than replicate some social aspects of the CG. For becoming the next central GGN resource depot, they are even worse positioned than RG. It would be good, though, to see them aim to initiate some level of the guild leadership dialogue that was missing from the CG, and still eludes RG. The resources are mostly decorative and nostalgic as this stage, but I like Radimir's vision to make this a "training ground," which is certainly a clearer mission statement than the CG had.

We also have the GGN Moderators' Guild, which is benefiting from the CG's closure, as the largest alternative forum about the GGN in the GGN. When I get the chance, I really look forward to being actively involved there again, because it also has volumes of potential but its main forum is surprisingly quiet and its general Q&A subforum, one of 11, is even quieter.

Most of all, however, we have Registered Guilds. And of course, I didn't mean for this post to go on for so long, but this is what I wanted to say: we need to get into RG. I've said to mods and I've written in my journal, it is not a fair contest in Registered Guilds for discussion threads. Ads drown everything else out, and together with guild buy/sell/service threads, discussion threads barely have a hope. A forum culture like that in other discussion forums, and in every guild, hasn't developed because people keep to their own ad threads.

Yes - the admins should look into this, or at least the mods should, and appeal to the admins to expand them. Personally, I don't take the shunting of RG into subforum status as a promising sign from the admins, though.

Why should they make changes when the situation doesn't look that broken? So what if one of the forum's broad guidelines - GGN discussion - isn't being acted upon? The admins create forums in response to user demand, not the other way around, so where is the demand for GGN discussion? Surely if there was real demand it would have been evident in the CG? Surely if there was real demand it would have pushed through the flood of ad/recruitment threads by now?

If we do want GGN discussion, we need to start having it, and RG is the place.

Guild glitch reports and functional Q&A can go in Gaia Questions & Assistance - the GGN is part of Gaia.

Affiliating, guild exchanging and of course advertising can all continue to coexist harmoniously (or otherwise) in Registered Guilds.

Chat threads like TPAM were not unique, either, and they can be created in the spin-off guilds, the GGN Mods' Guild or elsewhere, easily.

What we've really lost in the CG is a place to discuss the GGN and discuss captaining. And we never got passionate about that, even in our own guild!

We all have such different experiences in guild leadership - from running busy first-page guilds to starting small interest-based hangouts and from guild reselling for profit to all kinds of assistance with other captains running guilds - but we're not sharing these experiences with each other at all!

I spent a summer actually rating dozens of guilds and I saw some great ideas some captains had without realising it, and others that tried things and didn't get the results they hoped for. But even that, I did through PMs! That's why I tried to share some of what I saw in the old 'best practices guide'. We all should have spent more time talking about ourselves as guild leaders!

In short, if we want to have an official place for discussing the GGN and discussing guild leading, we need to start doing it in Registered Guilds. I am not optimistic of us being invited into a brand-new forum for these things when the admins have no reason to believe we'll run with it.