No members all officers monarchy (conscept based in Guild Wars)

[Severus T Snape]

Has anybody tried running their guild in a monarchy style giving all members officer permissions so that they can freely invite new members and start guild battles easier?

If everybody is an officer those are the only two benefits they get over being members.

I plan to keep a council of trusted members to bounce ideas off of.
I've tried running a democratic guild in the past and it simply doesn't work. Officers stop caring about guild growth and become clickish and it kills the guild. That and if you leave everything up to a vote it takes entirely to long to make a choice.

I'm aware that officers can not remove one and other from the guild, so that if there is an issue I am the only person who can do this. I believe I'm on often enough that this would not be an issue, and my husband also plays and he knows my password to log onto my account if need be.

We have a basic Code of Conduct that outlines your general "don't cheat, treat others with respect and act mature" guidelines.

....

I guess I'm just want to know if anybody else does this or had tried this. I'd like to know of the potential pit falls with this style of leadership and more so the membership.

[QueenTajah]

I call this "Open Enrollment" in Nuke. We go through these phases on a fairly regular basis just to get a new influx of people... Basically every member can sponsor/invite new folks to the guild, and everyone's on the standard 30-day trial basis.

I'm extremely picky about making new officers, so I make sure all my people & GMs know that it's strictly a functional change, and doesn't affect the organizational structure.

[Roxianna]

I think this is fairly common actually.

[Blitz Massacre]

Usually when there are multiple founders of a guild the result is a no-leader guild where everyone has the same responsibilities. I founded a guild with 4 leaders, now we are down to 3. Usually with the addition of more leaders comes a better working guild/ clan/ team. Although it may seem common, this type of leadership style is normally very scarce in the console universe.

[Severus T Snape]

We'll I'm glad that I'm not being told that I'm out of my flippin mind. I've got my husband backing me, but right now his accounts and my second account are holding the other 3 Hogwarts houses (wanted a complete set you know)

I still haven't heard of any hidden pitfalls. Though after the disaster in my last guild I do believe that PM privileges will be restricted to admins only on our forums.

[grinreapress]

In our guild we recruit members to officers, if they have good conduct within the guild, knowledge of game, active, helpful and basically have proven they are team players, this i find helps keep the guild strong, and we have loyal and permanent officers, i believe that the officers form friendships and groups within the guild but, find that this is not an issue, due to that all officers are very good at getting to know new members and always helping with advice and supporting new members as they learn the game play, we are all friends,(sometimes when we log off we are like the walton family lol) if theres any issues it usually goes to an officer vote and if ur online ,with the leader having the final say......

in the forum however i am the guild leader (forum only) and have added a section for chief officers that enable them to be able to manage forum aswell due to the fact that i trust there ability and that they are reasonable and very level headed ppl, i also put alot of effort and info onto forum so, its me that has ultimate control of the forum,...

regards grin

[revlazaro]

We tried doing the "Everyone an Officer" approach, but we wound up with kids who'd invite anyone and everyone into our guild who were not into the play style of the core group (casual, PvE focussed). Nothing was more annoying than telling people our group started long before GW, and was immediately hit with PM's like "Show me your Rank!" "I'll 1on1 you for Leader!" kind of stuff.

No, we shelled out the money to use our name, aint happening

[tex]

That kinda thing is pretty common but i think its stupid because there needs to be some type of hierarchy within the guild for it to remain competitive

[Zver]

From my experience, it is a pretty dangerous thing to do. As someone pointed out, you can end up getting a lot of people in the guild that don't share your views, values, approaches and behaviors. Plus you loose control of the guild.

Being democractic is one thing, but still control and stability are important when they are combined with growth. My experience that the best system is when you encourage members to actively recruit, but still all of the new members have to go through some kind of interview/probation period. This way you keep getting new people, but safeguard yourself against players that are incompatible with your guild (i.e. morons, etc, etc). Kicking a player from a guild always causes some sort of drama, so thoughtfull recruiting is best in avoiding it.

When you do give your members ability to suggest recruits and reccomend them to the leadership of the guild, it works well, because members feel some degree of responsibility in brining good members, rather than just going blindly inviting anyone they spent 5 minutes playing with.

As for everyone being an officer, I don't see a point, because then why not make everyone be a member? So basically you're saying that you do not have any leadership structure other than delegating and not taking responsibility. Empowerment of members works well in gaming, from my experience, but letting it run loose without some kind of leadership means a guild without unity or direction.

[Roxianna]

Everybody wants to be an officer, then they find out the title comes with work... A group of people with the title and power but with no responsibility sound like a recipe for a dead guild.