Arrianna

So, to summarize?

The reason that the clans were leaching topics from the boards is because of the specialization of the clans. By spreading those skills around to all the clans and then awarding clan points for clan members who participate in board activities like posting fan fics, submissions to the SOTW, etc. and taking clan points away for clan members that receive warnings points (or are banned) it can encourage board activity rather then the other way around.

Personally I like the idea of a running total of "Clan Points" earned for everyday board activity. It would encourage clan members to be competitive by contributing to the board in general. I know if I was in a clan and noticed that another clan had more points then mine I would be more likely to participate in board activities and posting in threads.

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False Truth

It should be, but the point is, it isn't. It's doing just about the exact opposite. For example, lets say we make a videogame clan(which we had). All topics concerning videogames would go there instead of sensory pleasures, because people think both sections are meant for the same topics. Same goes with a general anime clan, which takes posts away from the anime section. And other general clubs, which involve ordinary everyday conversations can be discussed in cyber lounge or journals. I'm just saying, name one thing that was discussed in the clan section here that couldn't be discussed elsewhere in the forum. That's probably the big difference between this site and Mage Knight. This site was perfectly fine without clans before, so taking them away is a possible valid option.

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Barronmore

I whole-heartedly agree with you.

The big difference between the MKrealms clans and the clans here was that in the Realms Clans they were not grouped to specific subjects. In the DHC (my clan) we had strategists, artists, writers, etc. So did the "Order of the Lions. So did every other clan. That's what made the clans interesting....the variety of members added to the enjoyment of the clan system. If we had a strategy article we wrote, we posted it in the strategy forum on the general boards. If Smitty had another great mini he painted, it went in the Artists' Guild, not in our clan forum.

The Clans on AO were too specialized. All our writers were in one clan. So, instead of posting their poems/fan fic's to the poems/fanfic forum, they posted it in their clan forum...denying all of us a change to comment on their creations. All the Graphic Artists were in another and that's where graphic arts migrated too.

Your exactly right, if you have specialized clans you lose all incentive to post in the General boards. It also makes the clans dull and boring. But if you have general clans made up of members with diverse skills you get a vibrant and living clan that can combine their efforts to create great threads for all of AO and can participate across the board.

Ok, enough of a long winded explanation...let's give an example of how we would have done things back on the Realms.

One of the biggest things that Dragon Ball and staff has wanted is a "Anime Review" section where AO members can create anime reviews. That has NEVER happened. The forum exists but it's never really be utilized. Under a Realms clan with mixed membership any clan can have an expert anime fellow that can write reviews. Every review they post in the General Review section of the board would earn their clan points.

For those graphic artists out there in each clan, they could participate in the Sig of the Week contest. They would earn clan points for their clan just for participating and earn bonus points if they could win.

Writers would get points for posting new poems/fanfics in the fanfic section for their clan.

Posting in the Clan section however would not get the clan any points whatsoever.

The point is, your creating a state of constant competition and allowing each clan member to participate at what they do best. It encourages clans to recruit members with differencing skills so they may be competitive across the entire board.

On the Realms the DHC and the Lions had a huge Clan war over who was the better clan. Most of the time it was civil, comprising of which clan had the better artists, strategists (that was the real big one), writers, etc. The rest of the Realms looked forward with enjoyment to a new release because they knew they would get a DHC figure review and a Lions Figure review. To keep one-upping each other we would add more and more details...finally creating an honest to goodness figure guide, complete with figure images so players could download them. It fueled the conversations on the realms and created (mostly) friendly rivalries between clans to prove who was the most dominate.

Every once in awhile the Realms even had a "clan war" (Required Clan Contest), but most of the time it was really unnecessary.


The key is you must have clans that have every type of member activities. Each clan should have writers, artists, Reviewers, etc). If you put all of the writers in one clan and artists in another you get what we just ended....and it doesn't work.

Activity of AO has nothing to do with it. Rather you have 500 or 5000 active members the clan system functions the same. As long as you have diverse clan membership you will have activity.

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Zui Quan

Here's an idea. How about if someone on the staff splits this discussion up into its own "What are your ideas for the clans?" thread. Since there seems to be the desire to input ideas, the topic should have it's own thread.

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Arrianna

*cough* I think it already does have it's own thread. *cough*

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Zui Quan

Arriana, you buzzkiller. :lol:

It still deserves it's own thread in the poetry area.

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Abu Dhabi

>.> i'm not sure if any of that will really help thought...

remember, we have about 30,000+ members but how many of them are active? i think the clan idea is a great one but i'm not sure if we have the boot straps for it. Barronmore's idea sounds awesome, but i can't really see it happening here...

however, i think there is a great attraction to this site. There's only 10 or so members on at any given time, but how many tens or hundreds of guests?

i think the clans have potential... >.> i just don't have any good ideas on how to make it that way though...

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Barronmore

Why? We already had a great deal of it. All that would have to be changed in the AO clan system would be to create 'general' clans that did not group all the skills into a single clan (like writers in the FanFic clan or artists in the Graphics Clan).

After that it would be a matter of setting up a point system to reward active clans for what they post. It's really not a hard thing to do, you just need to find an administrator who will commit himself/herself to it and clan leaders that are strong enough to inspire their clan to activity.

The difficulty is not in the organization, it's in getting people to 'sign on' and do it. But I can tell you, when it worked on the realms it was the best thing I ever saw. Every time I was considering leaving the site for good it was my activity and friends in the clan who kept me there.

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rockroc

sounds correct to me, What happened was the majority of the noob clan memebers left because they did not want to continue under the leadership of and unknown person, and that person who was beleived to acheive power thru methods that were entirely false. I choose not to give up on our former clan, and was hoping to expand it outside AO.

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Dragon Ball

In an effort to move forward, just to let everyone know I am actively looking at the Clan system and this is my number 1 priority now. I hope to have something good installed and am taking everyone's consideration into account.

ETA around a few weeks.

Thank you.

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Spin Da Ish

when do you think that the clans are gonna be back open again? any time soon cuz i'd really like to join the poems and fantics clan