I know, I know, a dead horse becomes a zombie and walks again to ask for a beating, but I get to thinking every few new moons.....and here's the consequence of my gears turning.

The applications are failing to display anything useful in determining the character of the players applying. They weed out the totally illiterate, but a fifth grade communication level can allow for a complete fill-out of the typical answers to the questions and reach guild invite status with ease. The quality of the people applying....has a lot of lazy in it intertwined with very poor communication skills. The application might have to be tweaked (I believe we really need an age thing there, regardless of any current members who're sons/daughters of current members before any age requirement is brought forth). 

I'm almost ready to suggest doing away with them altogether and turning to a more personal style of recruitment that involves direct contact with an officer/recruitment council member in a grouping situation or at least some sort of conversation. I don't know how much of my view is shared in the slightest bit by my fellows here in this Chamber of Brains, but I'm really much more into protecting the integrity of the guild channel atmosphere than gaining the digits for Molten Core. I want to go to Molten Core, but not at the cost of guild chat having d00ds who're hoping to be epixed wtf'ing and turnin' the channel into a kiddie circus for the specially educated. Direct contact with a player would be the best route in determining wether they belong. It's not the kind of task you want to log in to take on, of course.

Temblor's sicked his apprentice Darth Meshach on the people of Azeroth to recruit, and Meshach has gathered some applicants. I stress the value of quality over quanity in these cases. Though his enthusiasm for building upon our ranks is appreciated, of course. I spoke with him (in Ventrilo even!)and he's definitely taking on this task with determination. :) 

Our ranks will improve, but hopefully not too hastily as we've seen the effect quick mergers can potentially have if all doesn't mesh well.

Now, I know there's always the 2 week trial which involves a forced removal if a player turns out to be incredibly bad, but we've not excercised that often. I don't think there's a one of us officers who likes the feeling of stripping someone's badges off and telling them to hit the road. 

I'd volunteer myself to be the officer that removes players when their trial period is over, explanations and all that're entailed with the task.

I consider also the possibilty of keeping the applicant feedback forum confined to officer/council access only. 

So, I don't know how to go about it, but I could add a few things to the application if I knew how to access that thingamjig. 

The expansion's coming soon, and that should help rebuild some enthusiasm and bring some players out of hibernation. We'll get numbers back up shortly with our core, I suspect. Not really too desperate to add a bunch of Gary Vandervorts to the ranks to fill seats. If I'm alone in this feeling, I suck, and sorry! 

Thems is my thoughts for now.