Guild Membership Information

Guild Membership Information

This message will (hopefully) answer your questions about Guild membership and responsibilities.

Visitors
Visitors to the Guild are free to read all posts in any of the forums. However, they may not make any posts.

Registration
To participate in the discussions, you must be registered with the Guild. To register, click the Register link below the picture that is at the top left of every forum page. Fill out the form. At minimum you must provide a username, password, and a valid email address. The other items on the page can be changed by editing your account later. Please read the Terms of Service and then click in the I agree box below it. Repeat: please read the Terms of Service as they describe your responsibilities and expected conduct as a Guild member as well as the responsibilities of the Guild. When the form is complete, click on the Submit my registration button at the bottom of the form. You will receive a confirmation email shortly after registering. You must click on the link in the email in order to activate your account..

Junior Patron
Once you have activated your account, you will have a Junior Patron status. Being a Junior Patron when signing up serves to help you acclimate to the Guild and gives the Guild staff an opportunity to meet you. You can read any post in any forum but you can only post to the Entrance Hall forum. Junior Patrons can only make one post once every 90 seconds (flood control).

Entrance Hall
Do not think of the Entrance Hall as a lower class forum because good discussions happen there. All the moderators and site admins regularly visit and post at the Entrance Hall. Many Guild regulars stop by too. Even those who have been promoted to Senior Patron and can post anywhere come back to the Entrance Hall to participate. We encourage you to join in the existing discussions or even start your own thread. If you have something to contribute to a discussion in another forum, start a similarly named post in the Entrance Hall and in the post inform the moderators that it is a duplicate of an existing thread elsewhere. The moderators will see that it gets moved to the appropriate forum.

Promotion to Senior Patron
There is no set number of posts or time limit for promotion to Senior Patron. Promotions are agreed upon by the Entrance Hall moderators Gregoshi and KukriKahn and require that you participate in discussions in the Entrance Hall. You need to post often enough so that we can see how you interact with others in the forum environment. Your posts need not be profound, intelligent, witty or even agreeable. They do need to be respectful of others, not profane and non-hostile. We can promotion a Junior Patron based on one well constructed, informative post or, more typically, at least four multi-sentence posts. Although not guaranteed, most promotions are made within a day of your participation in threads at the Entrance Hall. Unacceptable behaviour will, at best, delay a promotion.

Senior Patron
A Senior Patron can post in all the forums and has flood control restriction that allows only one post every 90 seconds. This is equivalent to what a member at the old UBB forum had. Promotion to Junior Member is based on participation, conduct and contributions in your posts and is prompted by a nomination from an Org staff member.

Junior Member
A Junior Member does not have any posting restrictions (flood control) and can start polls. All user accounts on the old UBB board were given Junior Member status when they were converted over to the new board. Regarding polls, they are a nice thing, but not when the poll replaces the discussion. Polls should be used sparingly. If in doubt, contact a moderator for the forum in question and give them the specifics of your proposed poll. They will tell you if the poll is worth posting. Promotion to Senior Member works the same way as promotion to Junior Member, i.e., nomination by the Org staff.

Senior Member
Senior Members have two more abilities than Junior Members do: they can start topics in the WatchTower, a forum to discuss Org problems, and they can also use the Private Message feature, a board based email like system. The Private Message feature is a restricted feature because it would certainly generate a lot of stress on the server if used by all.

Demotion
We have described the way up. The opposite can happen too. A Junior Member who spams or is a poll abuser can be set back to Senior Patron instead of just being banned. This system can be seen as a 'traffic control' and a motivation to behave. Each level comes with additional responsibilities. Those who show an inability to handle their level responsibilities will have their options reduced via demotion. The goal is to keep these forums alive and enjoyable for all.

A Word (or Two) About Flaming
Simply put: resist the urge to start or participate in a flame war. Nobody likes being attacked or embarrassed in public and will therefore respond in kind. When you include personal attacks in your posts, the intelligent exchange of viewpoints gets lost in an emotional exchange of hostility. Flame wars accomplish nothing but dividing the community into opposing sides. The discussion follows a fairly predictable path and often results in the participants appearing very childish: You're lying/No, you're lying, If you bothered to read my post, that is not what I said, etc.

Here are some suggestions to avoid a flame war:

1) Use emoticons to help the reader better understand your intended meaning. This is especially important when using humour, sarcasm, or other subtle word play. An obvious bit of humour to the writer may not be so obvious to the reader. Keep in mind that to many people here at the Guild, English is a second language.

2) In a disagreement, focus on the issue, not the individual. For example, The problem I see with that idea is... is much better for constructive dialog than is Are you really stupid enough not to see the problem with your moronic idea?

3) If you need to vent your anger, do so in an email to a friend or post it in a private clan forum, but remain civil in your posts at the Guild. Think of it as a high tech way of screaming into a pillow.

4) If you absolutely must confront an individual, do so via email, chat, another forum, or some other form of communication. First, people are more civil when they are not concerned about saving face in public or strutting for an audience. Second, the vast majority of the Guild members don't care to be involved in or even read flame exchanges.

Ranks and Avatars
The old UBB board had a rank system, it was something simple like make 10 posts and you are a ronin, make 200 more and you are samurai hero. Many wanted a rank system when we moved to the new board, so one was implemented. In UBB you had to make 1,000 posts, which could result in a custom avatar. You only have to make 500 here on the new board, after which you can choose one from a list. There are 271 avatars to choose from right now, and more can be added.

Final Word
No one is more or less on this board, but those that showed they can handle the responsibility to be part of a community are given more options.