Changes to the Stormrage Guild system

[MongoJerry]

Attempting to reply to the thread as a whole, rather than to individual points -

Regarding the need for ranks at all:

I'm coming around to the idea that the population of Lurkers on Stormrage is becoming large enough that some more formal guild-like administration is probably necessary. So, for that server, having a set of officers to mediate conflicts and administer the guild is probably a necessary evil.

Taking the last part of your post and throwing it into the middle:

I think I'm a great example of someone who lurks more than they post.  In fact, prior to the WoW beta, I don't think I had posted once or even registered, though I'd lurked often, had the site bookmarked, etc.  I had to be encouraged to join the beta guild.  It even took me a while to work up the courage to actually talk and discuss strategies in guild chat.  I still rarely post, as I find someone else has usually made my point before I get to posting.  And yet, I'd like to think I make an okay Lurker, and that I'm an asset to the site and the in-game representatives of the site in the form of the guild.  If we did restrict to highly active posters or those who write up strategy guides (I'm working on mine, but it's my first attempt writing up a strategy guide instead of a history/mythology guide, so it goes slowly.), people such as myself would be excluded, and I'd like to think that'd be a loss.

Let's nip this concern in the bud. When I say that someone is a participant in the Lurker Lounge, that does not mean that they have to write strategy guides or post a minimum number of messages on the site in a given amount of time. A participant can simply be someone who "lurks" and reads the site. I will absolutely defend a person's right to "lurk," and no one should ever be excluded because of a lack of posting.

Regarding recruitement: I don't think that I or anyone else is planning a recruitment drive, and I feel like that's where the fear is we're going to take things.  Most of us don't invite people that we group with a time or two and think well of.  I have not yet met anyone in game that I would think of inviting who was not already a Lurker.  I'm picky like that.  I'm selective about the people I choose to play with.

The trouble is that comments from Teesh and Tal cause me to be afraid that this is exactly their intention -- to use the in-game "guild" as a way to recruit new website members rather than the other way around. I do not want people to be inviting a person into the in-game "guilds" just because they had a decent couple of instance runs with that person. It would be far better to refer the person to the website first and let the person get indoctrinated to the Lurker Lounge ways before having a banner over their heads advertising the Lurker Lounge.

To this end, I like Loch's suggestion of adding one thread that people can introduce themselves in.  As it stands, the site does not encourage new posters, and the environment can read as a little antagonistic to the uninitiated.

Agreed. The devil's in the details in this sort of thing, but I have an idea of how to do it. More ways of making new members feel welcome definitely need to be added. Give me a couple of days. I finally have some time after the holiday rush to add some content to the site. Also, I have to get used to the whole Mambo site administration system that the site is using.