[Ciderhelm]

My apologies on some of the jumbled parts. This was very late last night when I finally got my computer running smooth, and there was no opportunity for a do-over. I will continue to refine my approach based on your criticisms.

The scripted vs. unscripted areas, it's a lot smoother and easier to listen to in the unscripted areas, but it's less organized. If I know what I'm going to say it's usually bullet-point. If I'm unscripted I'm usually making sure there aren't dead spaces, which makes it difficult to think back to whether I've said something or what direction I need to go. I need to get more discipline with this, and good advice on it, everyone.

Kavtor, that's not bad information. I'll point to it with a rebuttal link.

Thist, how to handle difficult people? A lot of methods, and I hope to get to that soon.

Let me see if I can flesh out an outline for the second half for people.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: mattdeeze Very Helpful, Could you clarify the restrictions you mentioned on veto power of members on the Damacles (hope thats spelled right) System? I'm picturing that the person voting against a potential recruit has to provide a reason for voting against.. We are about to open recruiting interviews and I'm considering including a Damacles vote at the end of the recruiting process simply to make sure that no one has any issues with whomever we bring in.

Here you go:

Source

Damocles Recruitment
1) Applicants are voted on by all guild members. A single denial resulted in a denied application.
2) If a vote of denial is unreasonable then removal of the guild member who voted against the applicant would resolve the issue. This was never used.


Implementation
This was set up with a separate applicant discussion forum. When an applicant was accepted as a potential member after 2-3 weeks of raiding, their application was reposted within this forum.

Once the application was up there was a 24/72 rule in place -- any concerns about the player needed to be brought up within 24 hours in that thread and the resolution to those concerns was to be posted within 72 hours. Negative votes were not permitted until the issue had been addressed either positively or negatively.

All votes were public. This can be done in vBulletin and other forum software through a special option when posting polls. A lack of vote from a member was considered a positive vote -- abstaining was never considered negative and the membership was aware of this.

Votes could not be made for class balance reasons. If there was a class balance issue, leadership was expected to prematurely veto the application or the queue system was expanded.

Premature vetoes could occur at any point in the application process. Since a negative vote from the Guild Leader was just as valid as a negative vote from any other raider, many poor applicants never reached the stage of a public vote as the premature veto had already taken place.


Recruitment Posting
Recruitment posting on public forums clearly explained our Damocles policy. It was presented in such a way that potential applicants understood they would have to both perform well and have an attitude that the rest of the raiders appreciated.

On our own forums, we had a lengthy application format which required at least fifteen minutes to properly fill in. The length was intended to discourage those who were only generally interested in a guild instead of enthusiastically interested in our guild.


Did It Work?
For us, yes. Our guild raided only 20 hours a week but fully cleared all content up through and including Kel'Thuzad. Our biggest strength was that we had motivated players who showed up every night; with planning, we were able to compensate for the natural declines in membership that occurred as school began again and as the holidays approached. Though we raided a small schedule by the standards of a 'hardcore' guild, we raided every posted night for every posted hour.

[Leytur]

Awesome. Only suggestion. . . is there any possible way to get it dialogue/interview based so it sounds a little more conversational?

Oh, and while I enjoyed it I must say it does get a bit off the cuff. . .

[Ciderhelm]

Let me make sure I'm getting the criticisms correct before I work on improving the format.

1) The dictation-oriented, college classroom "professor ciderhelm" is boring and droning.

2) The relaxed second half was easier to listen to and more enjoyable, but the lack of structure and clear drive hurt the presentation.

The goal being to get more structured and more concise while maintaining the laid back nature of the second half.

[Nayre]

Yeah, I'd say just have an outline of your points, and loosely follow it. That's generally speaking, of course. For some things, such as where you need to go really in depth, using a script can make it work out better. Just don't worry too much about adhering to it 100%.

Regardless, though, they're awesome. I honestly didn't think that I would enjoy these podcasts (nor Vene's) when I first saw them. Now I actually wait for them.

Funny how things turn out...

[Krynis]

Very informative even for people not strictly running a guild but also for those interesting in helping to keep things smooth.

[Taowlie]

I have to agree, even if you get slightly off-topic, the more relaxed Ciderhelm is definitely more enjoyable to listen to. Great stuff as always

[Hollowskin]

Wonderful podcast. I took your information about mechanization to heart-- often being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work it takes to get momentum rolling. With the WWS charts.. tbh I never thought about the psychology behind them- how it effects the raid. Perhaps because they only time I cared about them was on my enhancement shaman. I believe I'll start posting WWS charts after every raid.

I must admit, I was iffy about the weekly topic for this podcast. No longer. This has proven to be a very strong podcast in amounts of new information for me.

Thank you ^_^

[Sangi]

These are nice. I listened to it yesterday. I have to agree with most folks here you speaking style comes across better during your improvisational moments but the information is jumbled. However when you are working directly from the bullet points it is a little less lively. I feel that this is because you are a little more passionate about the topics that you deviated with.

The mechanization works nice. I didn't really have a name for it until it was mentioned by you. Having an impartial set of rules and procedures in place makes the job of being an officer much easier. It turns a lot of problems from discussions to "What's the policy on such-and-such?". Of course coming up with the policy in the first place is always interesting.

I agree with the post a little further up in regards to the bank. The guild bank as it is implemented at the moment is not robust enough to deal with a large guild. If you have a small guild with a lot of members that you know and play with personally on a daily basis (such as a progression raiding guild) it is fine. However if you run a large casual/family guild where you may only know some of the people through a degree or two of separation then there are several issues that can come up. We get around the issues with allowing view to most and then asking an officer to retrieve the item from the bank. Brand new recruits can't see anything. This tends to remove most of the bank ninjas.

Also its funny you mention the WWS stats posting. We kept it to the officers until about three weeks ago. When we promoted two new officers they loved the idea of being able to look at it. Because of that we decided to open it up to the rest of the guild to view. In three weeks I haven't heard one word about it. I didn't even think that people were looking except I accidentally posted an anonymous version and people freaked out due to the names being different.

The information that you put up in these is good. I have found it useful to validate ideas we had on our own and for some new things for us to try. Keep up the good work, work out the kinds and I think this will be a great addition to an already great site.

[ebs2002]

I have a suggestion about how to deal with the on/off script issue that I learned in my public speaking class:
- when you make your outline, don't write complete sentences. Since you're speaking about things you know well, you don't NEED the complete sentence, you just need a short phrase to remind you to hit that point, and then you can just talk. Rather than having a point be:
--Makes this an ideal training ground for future managers
---You're going to make mistakes, but your mistakes won't destroy lives, and you get to learn from them

just write "future management, mistakes aren't serious" or something similar.

Second suggestion: Dead space is OK in moderation. Most people who are speaking publicly aren't comfortable with dead space and use filler phrases like "um", "and", "so", etc, because they feel like dead space is bad. It really isn't. If we're taking notes, dead space gives us time to finish writing. It also gives us time to absorb what you just said. This is also good for you to go back and review your outline to make sure you didn't skip anything (you shouldn't be staring at it when you're talking; even though you're not looking at your audience because it's a podcast, try to act like you're having a conversation with something and look at it instead of your notes. I guarantee it would sound much more laid back).

Again, I loved the content, I sent it to the rest of my guild's leadership and we all learned a few things. I'm looking forward to the next installment.