I got a reply from the lead developer about the idea we had

[mamarita]

As you know, I sent a pm to DJ Helsing about mass pm'ing. Dri, the lead developer replied...

here's how it went:


mamarita Wrote:
The GGN Moderators' Guild has been hashing out possibilities for the enabling of guild-wide mass pm'ing by captains and vice captains.

If it helps, we think that if you charge the guilds, from the guild treasury, for each mass pm that is sent, it accomplishes two things.

1. Gives the guild treasury something to do besides buy forums

2. Limits the number of mass pm's that can be sent- No guild is going to deplete it's treasury needlessly just to spam it's members.


Legitimate uses of the mass pm'ing within a guild setting:
Warn members of upcoming changes in ownership
Get activity back in dwindling guilds
Advise of major events within the guild that each member should know about,

Illegal uses which could cause a guild to lose its mass pm'ing ability:
Sending non-guild related chain letters
Sending pm's that are against TOS

We think that setting a fee for use of the priviledge would work quite well- say 500g per pm!

So, what does the development team, and Lanzer, of course, think of this idea?


Hello mamarita,

Thank you for your message icon_3nodding.gif Excellent suggestion - I will be sure to add this to the list of items to consider when editing GGN!

Cheers,
Dri  

[Metalic_Noodles]

Who is DJ?

~Metalic_Noodles

 

[Pilotslover]

I hate to say it, but it sounds like typical developer BS.

'Add it to the list' is just a fancy way of saying 'filing it in the bin', unless I see this instigated, I'm unlikely to believe it.

PL  

[MemoryDragon]

~I can slay my own dragons, I can dream my own dreams.~

I have to agree with PL. I'm sure they sift through it all eventually, but eventually takes a long time. Besides, I think the only time they actually edit the GGN is when something goes horribly wrong. stare

~My knight in shining armor is me.~

 

[churrlo]

I still think that we should say something like... charging a small fee per member gonk But maybe they will act on this. I have a suggestion anyways... how about we head down to the petition forum and make a petition to show them that our cause is really a good idea?  

[Metalic_Noodles]

There are petitions, for any guild update or announcement.

~Metalic_Noodles

 

[MemoryDragon]

~I can slay my own dragons, I can dream my own dreams.~

Like I said before... only when something goes horribly wrong. sweatdrop

~My knight in shining armor is me.~

 

[churrlo]

Maybe we should support a running petition then?  

[Metalic_Noodles]

MemoryDragon

~I can slay my own dragons, I can dream my own dreams.~

Like I said before... only when something goes horribly wrong. sweatdrop

~My knight in shining armor is me.~

How do things go wrong when no one is messing in the code on the seperate GGN servers?


See? That's what gives us hope. Then they fix the errors, after a months, when they finally figure it out.

I'm fairly sure no one is suppost to be playing in our code, but what else would cause those errors?

~Metalic_Noodles

 

[WindowOpener]

What makes me happiest is that you got a reply - it's pretty cool that anyone can message them about development and get a response that they'll keep the suggestion in mind.

I think we've all noticed a swing in recent years away from pure functionality and towards good design. It's not enough to have a feature that does cool things - it needs to be pleasing to the eye and focussed on making it easy to use.

The GGN was made before usability became the focus at Gaia so we find that our Mod Panels are just a list of links and there isn't much of a 'flow' to administrating a guild.

I think that will change in the rewrite, as a bunch of designers come on board for the first time and explore every different way they can think of to create the best possible user experience for guilds. It won't be a case of telling one developer to go off and create a feature, I think it will be a team effort with a lot more discussion and brainstorming than before.

Because of that, suggestions on how to implement these features must be useful, including ideas for mass PMs. It gives the team something more to discuss, and they explore the best way to use it.

If I can shamelessly add my own idea from my journal in, my more ambitious solution would be to have a guild mailbox (alongside our Inbox, Outbox, Sentbox and Savebox in PMs) where all guild mail goes - including mass PMs, as well as guild invitations, promotion/demotion notices etc. This would mean spam would be less of a problem, so we mightn't need to have a fee at all.  

[Metalic_Noodles]

That overwrite is going to include making us clubs isn't it? crying

Even with the extra box, and therefore a much lesser threat of the guild PMs pushing off regular PMs, but I can still, way to easily, imagine giant guilds, like poll guilds, getting asked to send a guild PM with a link to a thread or shop, or in the next guild PM with content, and getting paid if they add the link.

This is Gaia, someone is going to exploit anything, but some kid getting a guild just to mass PM people after mass inviting... I just can't see the PMs being allowed to stay without a fee. Also, people want a use for the guild account so badly, I wouldn't be surprized if they were happy the PMs took from the account. 3nodding Well, until the accounts ran out, but there are tons of guild with many mil in the account.

When you say mod panel update that will make it user friendlier, I think massive amount of images. Which is a bad thing. I knew all the controls before finding the captain's guild. I may be a power-idiot that's a bit too into knowing everything, but still, people accually needing to ask instead of looking at any one of 2 or three stickies is rediculous. (Yes, I am willing to use this ans an argument against redoing the mod panel by making the nice, text, links all imges.)

~Metalic_Noodles

 

[WindowOpener]

Agreed on the mod panel - just changing the text into pretty buttons would be unhelpful and make loading times that much more sluggish.

This is my suggestion for it though, which just takes the extra click out each action (following a link, waiting for a new page to load, then arriving at a new page with a link you need to click to go back to the first one).

All those tools could be brought out into the open, make the page look a bit healthier (because its functionality is already pretty good - the current layout just doesn't flaunt it), make the tools clearer (maybe captains who don't bother actually reading that list of text links will notice the subforum options before making CG threads) and also reduces the work involved to use the tools.

Yes, I slipped mass PMs in there. ninja

 

[MemoryDragon]

Speaking of journals... Another thing that has long been ignored on gaia. I mean, I'm aware that I'm one of the few people that actually use it seriously, but still. An update there would be nice. Especially something like a key word search. It would make searching through my 653 entries for one particular thing much easier.  

[Pilotslover]

As long as changing things doesn't make it worse.

I actually quite like the simplicity of the guilds as they are, we need extra features, sure but do we need the whole thing changed?

I worry for each update this site does, in all honesty, call me what you will but some of the updates have been ... grimmace worthy to be frank.

*shrug* Meh, it's how I feel.

PL  

[Mishikotoko]

I don't really like the mass PM costing gold. (Then again I am looking out for guilds which do not have a lot of gold to begin with.)

Now if it were "you get X amount of mass PM's to send per month or you pay gold" it might be different.