Yesterday, while idly daydreaming about Cataclysm guild features, a funny idea popped into my head. What if the Vote to Kick system Blizzard put in place for 5-mans was somehow implemented into the new Guild management interface?
Now before you say "Anexxia has lost her marbles!" I could see it working a couple of ways…
Guild Member-Initiated Vote to Kick
I think we have all at one time or another, watched a hacked guildie's characters silently log on and rob the guild bank dry. Or have been offended by a guildie trolling trade chat, making everyone who wore your guild name plate look bad. Inevitably, these things happen when there aren't any officers on to help deflect the drama.
What if in such a situation, a guild member could initiate a guild kick vote? And if it passed (i.e. the majority of those members on at any given time said yes, or whatever threshold your GM set it at), said member would be demoted to a no-bank access and no gchat capability guild status level, and the next time an Officer logged in, they would have a blinking guild management icon alerting them they needed to read what happened and decide the guildie's fate?
Sure, in my guild, this could mean certain long-time members would probably, for lulz, be demoted on a recurring basis. But overall, it could save Blizz GMs some ticket time, and save many guilds some drama. And if you were lucky, if it was a case of someone behaving inappropriately, it would give the person some time to think about if it is necessary for them to be in a guild that is OK with whatever the behavior was, or if it may be time to be a better WoW citizen and knock it off to retain their place in your guild.
Guild Officer Quorum Required for Gkicks
One of the reat things about having a number of Officers in your guild is it increases the chances that someone will be on to catch a hacked account and boot them out of the guild until the issue is resolved. But one of the bad things is sometimes an Officer has a bad day. Or sometimes two Officers don't see eye to eye on an issue. And sometimes an Officer goes batshit and kicks someone out of the guild for spurious reasons.
Having seen, in my very first WoW guild, a petulant Officer boot out a fellow Officer for disagreeing with them (no, seriously) about something trivial, or making a joke they didn't like (it was truly so insignificant that I can barely remember the what) I can see what happens when the gkick command is used in error. I recall giving that Officer a piece of my mind and then typing /gquit. As did another Officer and several other members. Within the week, that hothead Officer had quit as well and the guild was all but dissolved.
In a diverse guild, with a number of Officers, requiring an Officers quorum before kicking out a member of a certain rank or higher could avoid such drama. As Officers logged in, they would see a flashy Guild management icon indicating they needed to take action on the issue. Once the vote reached a majority saying yay or nay, the kick would either happen or the vote request would close down and go away.
I doubt Blizzard would ever add this to the new Guild management interface (whatever that may be.) But it certainly gave me some daydream fodder, thinking about what the interface could possibly do, given the right tools.
Hmm, I think this one has too much potential for abuse.
I sort of like it, sort of don’t as I can see a lot of pros and cons. My initial thoughts were “yeah, that could be cool”, but as I thought more about it and read it increasingly grew to a “no, that could really screw things up” instead. As I started to reply though it was back to, “well, it does have potential though”.
The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to say no to this particular idea.
Nod, it’s the kind of thing that would sound great on the surface, but could probably in many guilds end up being a tool for bullying.
I do like the idea of a vote to demote, but only if it came with a fairly extensive interface that the GM could set up. It would mostly be great for people who have been hacked – although in my guild we usually have at least one officer online or easily reachable to get online to demote someone as needed.
I agree with Psynister that I would also be inclined to say no to a vote to gkick. Mostly because those people who have the tendency to make you look bad in trade chat also tend to be the sort of people who travel in packs (in my experience anyway) and could potentially screw up other, decent people’s gaming lives.
All of that being said, I’ve really evolved over the years into a “when in doubt, kick ’em” sort of girl. That’s really done a lot to cut down on nasty incidents. 🙂
I think you do need to follow your gut on it. I have been in guilds where you’d basically need to personally insult the GMs mom IRL to get kicked out, with incredibly asinine, juvenile behavior tolerated for far too long. Would have been great to have a way to show the Officers that the guild as a whole was fed up with someone’s shenanigans.