A couple of weeks ago we announced changes to the way we structure ourselves with the introduction of mentors to help welcome new and returning members, and specialists to share knowledge and lead events. If you missed this post, you can find it here. We asked for your feedback and I’m pleased to say that most of it was positive, so we’ll be moving forward with rolling out these changes.
One of the points of concern that has been raised with the plans is over the definition of an inactive members. It’s important for us to start making the distinction between active and inactive members so we get a better idea of when to ramp up recruitment. At the same time we don’t want to make it really hard work for people with busy lives, who take some time out or are only interested in one of the games we support to be part of our community. It’s really hard to judge activity, but our first pass at it will be that we’ll class active members as those who have either interacted with us on any of our designated games, been in Steam group chat, or viewed the forum (rather than posted) in the last month. This definition says that MYST currently has at least 42 active members.
The flip side is that if you’ve been away from the group for a while things have probably changed a little – hopefully with a few new faces to get to know. To try to reconcile the two, we’ll be asking members who have been classed as inactive for 3 months or more to go through a returning period with an assigned mentor. Theoretically, this means you need to have no contact with us at all for 4 months before we ask you to put some effort into becoming part of the group again. Considering we’re a primarily social guild, we consider this fair. If you have any comments about these decisions, either too relaxed or too strict, we’d like to hear from you (either use the comments below or click here).
The first step will be to get the first group of mentors up and running, informing them about the new role they’ll be expected to do and also providing the support for them to do that job. We asked for existing officers if they’d like to be mentors and I’m very pleased to announce that ku ku, Jo Mk 2, Ent and Kobus have volunteered. So that they have a dedicated point of contact for all their needs, Lazarus is being promoted to being a leader and she will be in charge of looking after the mentors and their charges. Her role won’t include much in the way of administration though, so you should still contact Tunk, Andypanda or myself for issues in this area.
Unfortunately this does mean that a few familiar faces will be stepping down from playing a central role in our community. A big thank you to Lunar, Ethea, Flo, Cartis, JoJo and Sacred for all the hard work they’ve done over the years. I sincerely hope to see them return to prominent positions at a later date.
Over the next few days you’ll start seeing some people migrating to different groups and will be asking members if they’d like to be mentors on the forums. We’ll be explaining more about the specialist role and asking for people to come forward at a later date. We’ll also be contacting people we think may benefit from having a mentor, but if you think you’d like one please let us know in the usual places.
Tasha
3 comments
moseszd
July 10, 2012 at 22:00 (UTC 0) Link to this comment
But what are they (the mentors) going to do?
And what exactly does this mean? “Theoretically, this means you need to have no contact with us at all for 4 months before we ask you to put some effort into becoming part of the group again. ”
Do you mean ‘the three months you were gone PLUS a month?” Or “four more months?” I think you mean the first, not the second but maybe not.
Tasha
July 10, 2012 at 22:39 (UTC 0) Link to this comment
But what are they (the mentors) going to do?
In a sentence, lessen the challenge of breaking into a group of established friends.
Their main task will be to contact their charges regularly by whatever means are appropriate (read: forum pm, email, in-game chat), get to know them, introduce them to people in the guild are and encourage them to participate in the forum and in game.
This may sounds vague and, well, it is and that’s because everyone will respond differently to having this kind of contact. Part of their job is to build a relationship with their charge in an appropriate manner. Some people are chatty and will enjoy daily contact. Others might just like an update every 5 days or so. Others won’t want a mentor at all. We’d like to match people based on their preferences for PvE, PvP, what games they play, interests etc, so having a variety of mentors is important.
Because the mentors will (ideally) know the people they’ve been charged with getting to know well, they will also be involved in determining when they’re ready to be full members.
In Guild Wars 1, this is something I would have tried to do myself but a) trying to do everything myself nearly killed me b) I wasn’t great at getting to everyone equally, or an appropriate friend to everyone c) if I was went holiday/was ill the contact stopped d) I’d like to spend more time playing the game and less time sat somewhere chatting this time around.
And what exactly does this mean? “Theoretically, this means you need to have no contact with us at all for 4 months before we ask you to put some effort into becoming part of the group again. ”
It will take 1 month of no activity to go from a member to an inactive member, and 3 months of being an inactive member before you have to through this reintegration phase. So yes, the first one.
moseszd
July 13, 2012 at 19:34 (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Okl Good.
Thank you.