OfficersQuarters
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Officers' Quarters: How do we govern? Part 1
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.All of you guild leaders out there, ask yourself this question: Is your management style most like__Genghis Khan?__Thomas Jefferson?__Queen Elizabeth?__Kim Jong-il?__A council of elders?__An inanimate carbon rod?I started thinking about the many ways a guild can be managed after receiving the following e-mail. My apologies to Rodrigo in advance -- it was a very insightful, but very long e-mail, and I'm only including about half of it below. Hey Scott,First I want to congratulate you for adding such an interesting topic to the biggest WoW blog there is. Hope you keep up the good work! I'm a civil engineer from the far country of Chile. Before BC came out I was the GM of the biggest Hispanic-talking guild in all the US servers, we had over 250 active accounts and 400 characters. Our only recruitment requisite was being able to talk Spanish . . . [One of] the true keys to manage a guild this large and diverse was democracy. Officers vote for certain decisions. Guild members vote for certain officers. I think this point would be a great topic for a blog discussion. For some reason today guilds are ran by their founders . . . The GM is usually the guy that started it all and officers are then elected using different arguments but what is certain is that they are never removed (unless he kinda quits the game). How do you tell your own officers that he isn't wanted by the majority of the guild or that he isn't cutting it? We had leadership elections every 5 months and it worked great . . . All the level 60s had the option to vote via a Web form for officers and officers would then elect the GM. This method automatically removes most of the causes that could eventually destroy the guild . . . like dictators, friendship influences, greedy people in charge, etc As an engineer I've found that being a GM combines the two biggest challenges of any organizational leadership: Emotional Intelligence and Strategic Management. Regards,Rodrigo JimenezRiddance @ Smolderthorn-US
Officers' Quarters: My personal errata
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.What is "errata'? It's a fancy word, taken from Latin, that basically means "errors" or "mistakes." As much as I'd like it to, running a guild doesn't pay enough to make it my full-time job. So I work in publishing. Whenever we publish a book, before the pages even begin churning off the press, we're already hard at work looking for any mistakes that we need to correct in the next printing. Like most media companies, we call these mistakes "errata," probably because by giving them a fancy name it doesn't sound quite so horrible that we printed a book with a picture of Cookie Monster above the caption "Vladimir Putin." (Just a hypothetical example . . .)With 15 columns under my belt, I thought it would be a fine time to look back and, in the tradition of publishing, point out some of my errata for our readers' benefit and amusement.
Officers' Quarters: For all the peons out there
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Typically I use this column to address the quandaries and concerns of the people who are kind enough -- and crazy enough -- to run the guilds that make World of Warcraft a rich social atmosphere rather than a selfish, solipsistic mess. But this week I got a question from a regular, run-of-the-mill guild member (oh, how we officers sometimes envy you!), and it struck me as an intriguing idea for a column: What can a "lowly peon" do to stand out from the crowd and get the officers to notice you? Here's the question:I only recently read your post about grading your raid and well, I'm having a few problems myself being graded. I recently transfered servers and well, before that I spent like 2 months without playing because I hated my server. I was waiting so I could play with my RL friends. So, it turns out my friends got me in the top raiding guild of the server, and well, despite the fact that I'm really new, I get the feeling that I'm not welcome in their raids. My gear sucks [. . .] and therefore my DPS sucks, and well, they'd rather take any other hunter except me for the raids. My trapping skills are (I think) pretty damn good, [because] even if the mob or AoE-happy mage breaks it, I can handle the situation and re-trap, and continue chain trapping. However, I don't go into heroics because well, 1) I'm not keyed, and 2) they don't trust me enough for that. In an attempt to remedy all of this, I've been asking people to do 5-mans for rep and loot, but again, no one wants to go with me because they don't know me. I get this feeling that the officers don't like me despite the fact that they really like my RL friend. What do you suggest I do to get on their good side so I can help the guild progress? Thanks in advance.
Officers' Quarters: A brand new column about guild leadership
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. "You can punish bad behavior in your guild by having a leader talk to the person causing trouble." -- WorldofWarcraft.com's Game Guide Blizzard's official site can help you do many things. It can help you communicate your grievances to a customer service representative. It can help you figure out when the Darkmoon Faire will be setting up camp in Mulgore. It can even help you spy on the competition. But it is remarkably ill-equipped to help you run a guild. So where do you go for a little advice when drama explodes in your face like a backfiring Goblin trinket? For myself, I've basically had to wing it. But I'm here to make sure you don't have to. I'll discuss some ideas about how to punish guild members in a moment. Since this is my inaugural column, however, allow me to introduce myself first. Hi. My name is Scott and I'm a GL. In fact, I've been a GL of a single WoW guild for longer than just about anybody. My guild was founded in January 2005, about a month after the original game's launch. Because I was the first person of our group of friends who bought the game (and therefore had the highest level character at that time – a mighty level 40 or so), it fell to me to set up the guild. It was my first time running a guild in an MMO. My previous leadership positions included senior patrol leader of a Boy Scout troop and editor-in-chief of my college's literary journal – not exactly good preparation for the sheer insanity that can confront the leader of an online guild.
