In a small way, Eff the Ineffable, being an officerless guild, has created a stir among some of the people I know in the blogosphere. While several people have chimed in saying that an officerless guild is something they have done successfully (which brings me great comfort), to many others it seems to be a rather novel idea and I feel a bit like a rat in a scientific study with several people looking on to see how far we’ll make it before we croak.
To that end, I would like to work at making a series of posts about how we Effers are doing, how we run things and what difficulties we might encounter along the way. Some of this will be excessively “nuts and bolts” – but having an operation that can run smoothly depends on nuts and bolts and perhaps the odd bit of lubricant.
To get started, I am going to talk about our framework.
Rank and bank
We ended up with more ranks than what I had originally envisioned, but I think that each rank has a good reason for existing. There is the GM rank, a GM Alts rank, then it’s Raiders, Raider Alts, Member, Trial and the Bee Pit.
The GM Alt rank exists only to keep things simple, mostly for me. I couldn’t be on an alt in the ‘raider’ rank and effect any of the changes that were needed to bank permissions or getting someone else promoted. I do spend a lot of time on my main, but the requests for things to be done while I was on an alt were frequent and, on my part, frequently forgotten.
Raider alts keep the calendar simple to manage in an alt-heavy guild, so that was a must. We do targeted event invitations by rank because it forces people to make a decision in advance about whether or not they are going. It is easier for me, as the person managing the calendaring, to know who is planning on coming and who is not.
Member is where our more casual players hang out. Trial is largely unused since everyone who has come to us is known and vouched for by someone else already established in the guild. If we ever got an unknown person wanting to raid with us, we’d have a trial period to make sure they were able to fit in with our personalities and our goals. We’re so small. It’s very important that we can all mesh and work well as a team.
If you don’t know what the Bee Pit is for all I have to say is SHAME ON YOU.
As far as bank tabs, we only have a few so far. There is the general use tab, which is open to everyone from members on up and contains the most random assortment of things you can think of. After that we have the crafting goods tab, also open to members and above. Our raiding mats tab is third and only raider mains and above can withdraw from that and an authenticator is required to have the raider rank. We have a fourth tab, which is not designated for anything, but which will probably become our ‘for sale’ tab. Being able to sell off enchanting materials and epic BOE’s for a discounted price is a good way to get one’s guild bank funds healthy enough to provide repairs on raid nights.
So far, it seems to be working pretty well. And in a smaller group where we’re all mixing it up pretty frequently, it’s easy to establish relationships and build trust so I am hoping to lessen the few restrictions (such as limited withdrawal amounts) even further as we start the trial of fire that raiding can be.
Incidentally, our first raid is this weekend and we’re all very excited for it. I’ll be sure to report back on how it goes.
DIBS ON BEE PIT RANK!
That said, good luck this weekend! It’s daunting, nay, TERRIFYING to have that first raid but when you get in there, you’ll see what needs to be improved and feel better for the performances of everyone involved.
If you want the Bee Pit rank you’ll have to actually come play!
Thanks for the well wishes. I am excited for the raid and to see how well we all work together. I think I will also make someone else be raid leader. Bwahahahaha *cough* hahaha…
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Question, out of curiosity:
Are you guys trying for “Officerless” or “Leaderless?” Or rather, are you shooting for a benevolent dictatorship with you at the helm, wisely and compassionately listening and weighing the input of all your members to come to an agreeable compromise ultimately decided upon by you, or are you just the figurehead required by blizzard’s in-game mechanics and the group is genuinely directed by a leaderless consensus? (neither of those is better or worse than the other, I’m just curious)
I personally think that one of the only real obstacles to an endeavor like this working or not is just keeping everyone involved on the same page and maintaining a running dialogue within your group. It sounds like you guys are off to a great start and I wish you all nothing but happiness and success.
I read once that all online communities are, at some basic level, all dictatorships of some sort simply because of how the internet works. Every “space” is owned and controlled by someone and the very architecture that allows it all to function is hierarchical at its most fundamental core. Even when benevolent dictators over certain “realms” choose the option of turning over their control to the occupants, they are still ultimately in control.
As I mentioned before, the only thing I would worry about if I were in the role of you or one of your guild members is you burning yourself out from consciously or unconsciously shouldering too much of the responsibility yourself. Just making sure that both you and them are aware of that possibility though reduces its chances drastically.
Again, best of luck, and thanks for a good read!
Good question – and I meant to reply to your last comment, I really did, but I saw something shiny.
We are not really going for the benevolent dictator approach, although to a certain point it is somewhat inescapable. I can’t give anyone else the ability to create ranks or modify bank permissions, which means that technically I do have final say over things. And no one can remove me from my spot.
The best way I can see to address that is to not make any major decisions without first consulting the guild at large. In this, we have several advantages. We’re small, with I think less than 20 individuals, several of whom are really just there to sometimes hang out on an alt (I’m still collecting bloggers… we’re like a mini-SAN). And because pretty much everyone in the guild either blogs or is an active reader and commenter on blogs, discussion has been a wonderful, productive and frequent exercise. The forums are actually used by all our members, which is so refreshing I cannot even say.
With several ex-officers and ex-GMs in the crowd, I’ve been forthright with things I want to manage and things I would be as happy to not have as my sole burden. Gnoble has done a fantastic job of stepping up with putting nightly heroics on our calendar and no one has been shy about putting something together on their own. For the most part, if anyone has anything to discuss, they get the ball rolling on their own and we have reached consensus jointly.
Most recently, I started a discussion about raid leading. I am happy to do it but if anyone else wanted to, I wanted them to feel free to do so. A few people indicated interest and stated also that they don’t like managing the calendar or being loot master. Those are my favorite parts of the exercise, so we agreed to let those who wanted to call fights and determine strategies do so and to let me handle the portions I enjoy.
I think that staying small and integrating our raid team as tightly as possible are going to be things we will always have to be mindful of in order to succeed. That and being honest about what level of effort everyone is comfortable in taking on for the guild as a whole. I already want someone else to pitch in with bank management…. or maybe I just need to relax a bit on the level of organization I hope to see there.
Having just come from several years of doing it all on my own, I am not about to allow myself to regress.
Necro comment! Do you ever go back and re-read any of this stuff to see whether your still on the same course with your thoughts? Will you even see this?
I do sometimes go back and give myself a reread. Usually when I’m wondering “did I already SAY that?”
I confess to being curious as to why you ask about this one, specifically!
Basically, we’re an anarcho-communist society in theory, but a moderately communo-dictatorship in practise. ;)
No worries about the delay, the question was mostly rhetorical I think. The line between the two is pretty fuzzy until anything happens that requires someone to step up and lead the group through it.
Production Company is actually pretty much the benevolent dictatorship model as well. Roksi (our GM) handles everything outside of raids, including most of the recruiting, promortions/demotions, and even tracking attendance and who sits or gets invites from night to night. I take over once the raid starts though and to be fair she is probably a lot more “benevolent” than I am but it’s nice to have the good cop / bad cop option sometimes I think. We both consult each other before either on of us makes any decision though and we solicit feedback from the rest of the raid team so often and on so many different subjects on a regular basis that I think we have forced them all into some kind of information/feedback overload to the point they’re just happy to go along with just about anything. Another lesson from the new information age that we find ourselves in is that the information overload of complete and total transparency is almost more effective than the overly closed lip secrecy based paradigms of a couple decades ago. It is also far more effective at engendering a high level of ownership, loyalty, and buy-in from the members of your team than trying to conceal things behind the curtain of leadership that used to be the status quo… I think I’m rambling at this point… /wanders off
Yes. I think everyone is a big fan of us not having any closed doors. There is no one in officer chat (except me, so, uh…) and we have no officer quarters on the forums. Everything is out in the open and everyone can see and participate in any debates that lead up to decisions being made. Because I have the GM hat I’ll usually be the one to say something like, “Looks like this is okay with everyone so this is what we’re doing,” to sort of ratify it.
It could be more interesting than I like to see something come up where we’re not all freakily on the same page already though.
Aye we redid our ranks recently due to ANOTHER hack on someone without an authenticator. We did it this way due to the fact that main raiders have precedence on loot rolls and we have a gazillion alts as well. Makes it simpler for a loot master.
We had to remove people from the rank to turn on the authenticator. That was not so fun…here is what we have now.
GM
Officer
Officer NA (no authenticator)
Main (raiders)
Main NA (see above)
Alts
Friends & Family
Initiates
One thing I’ve found is that those with long-time authenticators could be promoted to the correct rank, but those who just bought them have a harder time getting them to be recognized within the guild rank system. We’ve gotten several reasons why but from what I can see. Peeps have to log in every day on each too for it to register and it takes up a week (although GMs and troubleshooters have told us it s 72 hours, this only seems to apply to the most active toon on an account) I hope they work out those kinks soon. Very annoying.
The bank tabs are only available to Mains/Officers/GM. Those with NA or alts or F&F or Initiates do not have access.
Good luck on your raid! What is your first boss/place going to be? We are having a blast in BWD.
We are going to head to Bastion of Twilight first and see how it goes. The fights sound interesting so far, but not too bad if you’re not worrying about other combos that might come up next time. I just wish I had any idea what to expect from us as a raid group.
Your guild is nicer than I am. If you don’t have an authenticator, you don’t get to have a raider rank. And you might not get invited to raids if you don’t have a raider rank. I hate putting up with hacks.
It sounds to me is what you’re going to end up with is one of two situations: case 1 is you have all the power and all the responsibilities, case 2 is you have all the powers but other people have stepped up to take responsibilities as well.
That sounds really blunt and of course I am not basing this on you guys specifically but rather on “that’s just how things go”. If a guild exists there are definitely powers and responsibilities involved – even just invite/gkick powers. There’s also responsibilities, though that varies more; if you raid, there are raid leaders and that is a responsibility, if you pvp there are skirmish leaders, if you do regular heroics, then someone schedules them. You may be separating these roles from the office title – and this can work very well; make the raid jobs connected to the raid and not the guild, etc. But they still exist.
Say someone steps up to manage your bank. You’ll have to give them more bank privileges than you might want to give even a raider. It’s necessary for the job. Maybe you don’t call that “officer” but that’s what it is, really. If you have someone run a website for the guild, they may not be a capital O officer, but their responsibilities say that they are, don’t they?
It sounds like the only thing you are avoiding – and this is a really key thing and might be worth all the hassles – is the ability for someone to point at himself and say “I’m an OFFICER! Obey ME!”
While I do see the possibility, that’s not really how things are panning out so far. Because we don’t have official officers, I think everyone feels a lot more free to get “officery” things done without worrying that they might be stepping on someone’s toes. It’s also really pretty much everyone pitching in. So if I made an officer of everyone who did pitch in, we would have maybe two members.
I think the biggest distinction is the fact that everyone really is equal, save me, and that’s only due to an unavoidable part of the game design. Provided I keep a light touch – something I absolutely intend to do – no one should have any reason to even remember that I happen to hold the GM title.
In my former guild, towards the end, we had way too many officers and most of them did nothing but did have the “OBEY ME” thing going on. That sort of bad behavior just isn’t terribly possible in a guild that doesn’t have many distinctions of rank and I think it is that, more than anything, that is going to foster continued involvement by everyone. It’s got to be much easier to get invested in a guild when there isn’t some arbitrary line that declares you a second-class citizen.
Leaderless, rudderless, and no doubt clueless too!
Of course clueless. Look who the team captain is.
We’re doomed.
As I’ve mentioned to you on Twitter, I really support the untraditional idea of a leader-less, officer-less guild where everyone shares in responsibility equally. I plan on making a character on Eff’s server so if you have any questions about how my guild operates in such a manner, we can have a chat!