Okay, so since I'm now apparently, by Tanasha's divine fiat, a mover/shaker in the field of getting the GG back in business, I open this discussion to the table.
Given:
The GG, as it stands, is a barely-functioning morass of meandering threads. This is a result of several intersecting traits, which are not necessarily all negative. These traits are common to most major GG threads. Most of these traits are also artifacts of the days of old, when there were no registered guilds and any mook with a keyboard and enough motor control to bang it could jump in a thread and attempt to derail. I shall elucidate forthwith:
There are approximately 1.8 members who bother to read and/or post. (Blessedly, literate members are more likely to stick with a guild. Thanks for the grammar, guys. biggrin )
Most threads are open-ended: that is, the thread has a general purpose ("this is the ASDF base"), but have no direction or "plot".
There is little influx of new blood - merely half-interested n00bs who see us on a search, put in a request, and never look again.
Objective:
Renovation, rejuvenation, renewal. The three Rs of any guild showing its age. I assume that most people are here to partake in the GG in an active role; I also assume that people barely bother checking more than once a week because new posts are such a rarity. That needs to change.
Methodology:
Reduce, reuse, and recycle. The three Rs of actually achieving one's objective. Hey, it worked for Captain Planet, right?
Reduce: If it's dead, prune it. Members who never posted? Get rid of 'em. Thread hasn't been updated since 2004? As Justin Timberlake once said, bye-bye-bye (bye-bye!). Might sound crazy, but it ain't no lie.
Reuse: If it's not quite dead yet, keep it around. Spruce it up. Get rid of excess pages, chop off plot leads that spiraled off into nowhere, that sort of thing.
Recycle: If it's too good to lose but too dead to keep, then wipe it and start anew. Summarize the salient points in the opening post and get things rolling again.
Implementation:
I propose the following ideas.
Reduce...
... the memberlist to active members. Send out a mass PM stating that our policies regarding activity have been updated. If members still want in on the guild, they must post in a thread we will create for that purpose. After two weeks (or one? We can always re-accept folks who were on vacation and whatnot if they never get a chance to see the PM. Yeah, one is better.), we wipe the list of folks who didn't respond.
... the "spammy" look. People are a lot more likely to hang out in a clean, well-organized environment. We've already got the right idea with the primary RP threads being stickied; however, this needs to go further: preface tags for threads (e.g. [RP] for roleplays, [G] for guild-related OOC, and so on), one or two subforums (definitely an OOC forum, and I'm sure there'll be at least one other topic which deserves separate categorization), and whatever else we can think of. This isn't such a huge issue right now, but I'm typing by free association, so it gets more words. razz
... dead threads. If it hasn't been updated in a month, it's gone. However, the thread owner obviously should be contacted first and offered a recycling option (see below).
... first post sizes. Seriously - a ten-page post is a lot easier to read in the heat of an RP session, IMO, than at the beginning. It's like a grueling endurance test you have to pass to be allowed entry into the thread. It works on ExDis, as that's how you keep the n00bs away, but presumably we're keeping the n00bs away with our acceptance guidelines. (More on that in a moment.) If something requires buttloads of description - that security system has to be able to keep out God and Ganale, y'know - then link it offsite, or hell, we can have a subforum just for long descriptions or something. Just get that crap off the front post.
... unnecessary memberlist additions. Our front page is fantastic in its current form, but it needs something extra - a more OOC addition that details expectations of new members. We should require an RP sample for entry. Et cetera.
Reuse...
... the "core" RP stickies. Clean out OOC stuff not immediately relevant to the RP at hand (e.g. announcements like "I'm not here next week" or "I wonder when she'll ever get around to responding?"). Hell, here's an idea: for future OOC stuff in-thread, there could be an OOC thread for that RP where people post their statement - then post a one-word (like OOC) link to that post within the main RP. That way the RPers would know an OOC was occuring, and where in the RP that OOC occurred, but the entire content of the OOC post wouldn't clog up the IC goings-on. ... I'm sure there are other good ways to spruce these suckers up and prepare them for resurrection.
Recycle...
... the dead RPs. Good concept that never took off? Scrap the action, keep the concept, jazz it up a bit, and give it another shot. Thread owners should be contacted with regards to dead RPs about to be pruned out: either we can chop it, or you can bring it back. Owner's option.
Corollary to above: If the thread's good enough to keep as-is and just needs a shot in the arm, the action can be condensed into a few posts in the beginning to cut down the page count. Or perhaps just a summary of the most important points.
General Ideas:
We need to advertise - not just a recruitment thread in the Guilds forum, though that's good. We really need personal advertisement. If there's someone in another RP you're in - you know the kind; whenever you see her post, you're all like, "Hell yeah, another good post" - invite her to take a peek. Tell her we could use her expertise in keeping the ball rolling. That's the kind of new blood we want, after all. Open recruitment is like retail: nine times out of ten, the guy who just walks into the door is a moron, and he may ask you to help him find his a** (he might even offer the use of his handy map and compass).
We need to have alliances with other guilds. Especially if we can get overlap with several members. We can host RP event threads periodically, have inter-guild contests, that sort of thing. We'd therefore need a mod to be a liaison officer whose primary duty was inter-guild democracy. (Not it. xd )
We need some GMing on these RP threads. People generally do a good job of regulating action for themselves here - another artifact of the pre-registered-guilds era - but I think we ought to have a rotating GM basis, where every so often a thread member gets to crank out a new plot or event for the others to deal with. I think maybe a caveat stating that the GM's primary character should have only minor involvement would be good; prevents the occasional tendency toward making situations that offer great opportunities for glory and badassness for only one character. Not that we generally have to worry about that. smile Future RP threads should have the option of having a designated GM to guide the non-player action.
Here's an idea for some other future threads which I'll put here just to remind myself for when I make a new thread: a d20-sorta system for skills, attacks, defense, etc. - nothing so complicated as an actual RP system; rather, if a player is attempting something not guaranteed, he adds a roll in with his post, and the thread GM then decides whether the roll exceeds the difficulty of the action. Maybe just a little bit of extra spice to entice RPers along. biggrin
...
Who's got more to add?
