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Subject: The Un-Official Guide to Group Making
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Introduction:
* Many of Bungie.net’s newly created groups fail within two weeks. The cause? Lack of activity due to poor content and/or neglect of the administrative staff. A group is almost like a child; in its first few steps, it needs much attention before it can walk on its own. To give you a concept of what a successful group looks like, I strongly suggest that you take a look at the Top 7 largest groups on Bungie.net as role models to use for your own group’s structure. (Please PM me with any inaccuracies)

1. The Marty Army: 1608 members
2. Halo Movie Clan: 1449 members
3. Mjolnir Battle Tactics: 1506 members
4. Chapter Founders: 1073 members
5. M@5t3r Ch13f'5 Online 786 members
6. Chaos Redefined: 762 members
7. Igni Ferroque:726 members

If you join any one of these groups, you will learn quite a bit. You will immediately notice that each is highly active, its members are very enthused and patriotic, and each group’s respective content is high quality through and through. Most have a supporting .com site or one in development. To encourage even more activity, clans are usually linked to these larger groups. The Top 7 is a list to aspire to and with luck and a bit of determination; you’ll see your name up there too!

Step 1: Making Your Group:
Before you make a group, you must be willing to devote hours, days, weeks, and months towards it for it to succeed. Note that if your members see you aren’t posting frequently with any explanation, or your content hasn’t been updated, your group will slowly die. To make a successful group, there are certain steps you need to go through. Complete each step thoroughly, and your group will be a success before you know it.

Planning the Group: Part I
* To have a successful group, everything about it must be planned and organized. Let’s go ahead and start with your group’s subject:

Group’s Subject
Before making your group, decide what you want the subject of your group to be about. It has to be something interesting for everyone: try to avoid aiming your group at a niche if you want to reach the Top 7. If it involves creating multimedia content like montages, or comic design, make sure you have the basics (Xbox Live & a capture card, or digital scanner and artistic skills). Again, if it is multimedia content, it must be high quality for it to succeed. Amateur videos will not attract the crowds you desire. If you don’t have the skills to make a solely multimedia forum, go ahead and make a discussion or guides forum like the Top 7 groups the Marty Army, Mjolnir Battle Tactics, or Chaos Redefined.

Naming Your Group:
* Obviously, you want your group’s name to reflect the subject that your group is discussing. Attempt not to make it too general and flat (such as Halo 2 Discussion), but not so exotic that it is no longer rememberable. (e.g.1337Z0R$$ AW3S0M3 G\_/iD3$$) Good names will be abbreviated out of either member fondness or convenience, try to keep this in mind when naming your group (it’s hard to imagine abbreviating 1337Z0R$$ AW3S0M3 G\_/iD3$$ as an example, but Mjolnir Battle Tactics neatly shortens to MBT).

With that done, go make your group. Go to My Groups>Create New Group. You should reach a screen that asks you to accept Bungie.net’s contractual agreement. Read that before continuing. Once you are done, go to Planning the Group: Part Two.

Planning the Group: Part II
You should now be greeted with a form, the first subject of the form being “Group Name: (required)” By now, you should already have decided on this; go ahead and paste it into the text field. Below is a check box, “Membership requires approval”. Keep the box checked; you can change it in your group settings later. With your group locked, you can PM members a welcome message to get them acquainted with your rules, mission, and whatnot. Remember to keep the welcome message crisp and clear; go ahead and write a pre-scripted one in Microsoft Word after this guide.

Group Motto: (required)
* This is one of the two large text forms that will influence the character of your group’s homepage. The group motto is not a thesis: keep it concise, sweet, and focused. What is your group truly about? This part doesn’t even have to be very informative; it just brushes over the subject. Here are a few choice examples from bnet’s Top 7:

Mjolnir Battle Tactics’ Group Motto:
* “Know your Weapons. Know your Enemy. Know the Combat Zone. LIVE THE EXPERIENCE.”

M@5t3r Ch13f'5 Online’s Group Motto:
* “Bringing Multiplayer for single players everywhere!”

Chaos Redefined’s Group Motto:
* "So the Spartans at Bungie can hear that pin drop in the Storm of Chaos."

-Notice how each of these mottos have a somewhat, veiled if you will, meaning behind them:-

* MBT’s (Mjolnir Battle Tactics) mission is to create Halo 2 guides to benefit the Bungie.net community; notice how their motto talks about “knowing the combat zone” and “your enemy”. Precisely what their guides will help you do.

* The M@5t3r Ch13f'5 Online group mission is to have great online Halo multiplayer battles. Their motto brings this point across easily and quickly, telling new members what their group does, and keeping old members focused and directed.

* The Chaos Redefined mission is to gather fan submissions, and submit the best of them to Bungie for the designers to use while making Halo 3. Their motto, with mentions to “That pin” (ideas), Spartans at Bungie (Bungie employees), and the “Storm of Chaos (Bungie.net forums) hints towards their mission, but like MBT, doesn’t say it outright like M@5t3r Ch13f'5 Online. Whichever method you prefer (stated out-loud or hinted at) you may use for your group. Make sure everything is spellchecked. Blatant spelling errors on your homepage indicate unprofessionalism, and prospective members will not take your group seriously.

Write Your Group Rules:
* Write rules that everyone in your group must follow…and make it clear what will happen if they are disobeyed. Don’t be incredibly harsh over the small things, (or members will leave) but don’t be easy on the larger ones (racism, flaming, threats, spam, etc.) You need to run your forum equally and fairly: a list of rules will help both you do that and help your members obey.

Group Description: (required)
* This is not like the Group Motto; here is not the place to be vague and slightly mystic. The group description is where you get your point across clearly and loudly, feel free to use bold and italicize when necessary. Most groups also use the 500 character maximum to put in handy things like group allies (discussed later), or a link to their supporting website (group websites also discussed later).

* Five hundred words gives the freedom to go into fairly extensive detail about your group. Don’t write so much that your homepage is cluttered, but don’t skimp out on important details. Give new members the gist of things; try to focus on what makes your group unique, and what your ultimate goal is (most active group on Bungie.net, most numerous, largest movie group, best guides, etc). Newer members will refer to this at first glance to see if your group is right for them, and older members will come back to it for insight. Remember that this will show up on your page every day, so be eloquent and spell-check.

Group Location: (Group HQ City, Group HQ State/Province, Group HQ Country, Group HQ Zip Code)
* This is optional, but it is recommended that you put something, perhaps the country that you the group founder are actually located, or maybe something fictional (e.g. The Library, Delta Halo). If it is fictional, make it something original, unique, and preferably humorous. If you poke a little fun every now and then, it lightens up the unfamiliar nature of the forum that new members often feel. You should try hard to make them feel at home…a fictional group location is a good way to do that. Note: Don’t feel obligated to fill up each location box, you don’t want your location (and thus your homepage) to look cluttered.

* With that, everything on this Bungie.net provided group creation form is complete enough for submission, so press the Create Group button and continue.

[Edited on 8/30/2005]

  • 08.17.2005 2:13 PM PDT
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Preparing Your Group: Step 3 Group Location
With your group created and your mission written, it’s time to prepare the homepage, the forums, and the security roles. Let’s start with the homepage, and then we will move onto setting up your group’s forums and security roles.

Setting up the Homepage:
* I cannot stress enough how important your group’s homepage appearance is. New members will not like a cluttered, disorganized, and unintelligent homepage: this is not a step to be lazy in. You will notice that all the Top 7 groups have well-kempt homepages, and you should do the same.

* Groups generally put up a Welcome! for new and prospective members. Make this one of the only threads visible to non-joined members. In it you should include a more detailed version of your Group Description. Items to also include are the rules and regulations of your forum and what will happen to members who do not obey them. Try not to be too strict on the small details, but be highly stringent on the important ones (spam, -blam!-, racism, etc). This is another chance for you to make your forum look very friendly to members who may know nobody in your group. You need to make them feel as though you have created their home away from home…this is a great chance to do that.

Preparing the Forums:
* Before you start promoting your group, you must prepare your forums so they can properly handle the onrush of newcomers and not degenerate pointless discussions or worse: inactivity. Create stickies for discussions you want to save or you want your group to focus on. To minimize spam, make a thread for “Off Topic” to keep random discussions to a minimum. If you have multimedia content, display it in a stickied thread for members to comment on it. Here is an opportune time to post your group’s history of founding (if any), your rules, and your security role system (below). For each of these threads, post them then lock them (i.e. there is no need for comment on your rules system).

Security Roles/Ranking System:
* This is highly important to the success of your group, delegation of power. A good administrator knows how to give fair power to his staff, but not loose control. Be wary that it is a careful balance: excess delegation where everyone is a moderator v.s. too little delegation where members loose interest and leave when they realize they will never be promoted. Reward activity with promotion, but inactivity or insubordination in the moderator staff with demotion one or two ranks. Keep your ranks logical and slowly more powerful until you reach admin level. Bungie.net allows you 12 other security roles (15 if you include the defaults), so there is plenty of room for an effective security role system.

* To make your security roles, go to Home>Admin Tools> Security Role Editor>Create New Security Role. Name your security roles creatively (e.g. in a film group, you the admin call yourself the director), but make sure to define them in that locked thread on your main forum so member’s know what the different ranks mean.

* Warning! Never give full power to those you are unfamiliar with/don’t trust. Although this may seem obvious, many groups have lost their original leaders by imposters who have booted the head and taken control.

Preparing Your Group: Step 4
Here is the last and final step before you can go advertise: promoting your preliminary moderator staff, and creating your content (if any).

Preliminary Moderator Staff:
* Your preliminary moderator staff are those whom you know from life outside of your group. These people may include family members, friends, Xbox Live buddies, good acquaintances from other groups, etc. Send them and email, PM, IM, or phone call and talk about the merits of your group. You might want to mention the content (below) you are about to develop to get them interested. Once you have them on your side, give them promotions instantly, you don’t want to give the impression you aren’t serious. You will need these select few to get your forums rolling, tell them to post in the forums and make a few news submissions if they so desire. You want your forums to portray the message that they are active when it comes around to advertisement time. Note: don’t give these people the highest moderator position, just enough to keep them satisfied. You may find someone better later, and demoting moderators creates resentment.

Creating Your Content:
* The few people that you invited to your forums before opening day will be needed to create preliminary content (if any). Make a quick trailer for your movie, write a short comic for your series, or animate a quick Flash game for your future game site. Make sure that it is short (so you don’t get bogged down in creation and not promotion) but high quality (to convince new members you are worth of their time). Try to ensure that if you are making a movie, everyone has a capture card and Live; a scanner if you are writing a comic; or Macromedia Flash if you are making games. Note: Try to keep most of your content Halo related as that is the policy Bungie.net lets you operate under, but also because the people whom you will be telling your site about on Bungie.net happen to be Halo fans.

Step 2: Advertising:
Once your group is perfecting your group, it’s time to see how it stands up against other groups on Bungie.net. Note: just because it doesn’t take off at first doesn’t mean anything. It takes hours of just promoting to get your group moving, but make sure to spend time on the forums as well to encourage activity. A small group that is void of recent posts is not an appealing one for new faces to join.

Signature Advertisements:
* Possibly the easiest and most common way of advertising. This form is most successful when you have many members for the reason that you have a higher volume of signatures. It is also highly effective if you post to the Bungie.net forums with intelligent, thought-provoking discussion; people will find you and your group interested and be inclined to join. Because frankly, no one wants to join the same group as a spammer/flamer.

* Post an advertisement in your signature with a brief description of your group, text URL link to your homepage ([url=http://]Your Group]). To draw eyes to it, make your advertisement bold, italic, etc and keep spelling completely accurate. As group leader, it is your job to ensure that every member of your group puts a link to your group in their signature. Make a news submission or post on your group forum with exactly what you want placed in everyone’s signature. If people genuinely like your group, they will be happy to oblige.

PMing
* This is quite a bit more labor than just signature advertisements, but it is highly effective. Work to find people on Bungie.net that seem like they would fit well into your group (they may have filmed montages, written comics, etc). Send them a PM that tells of the merits your group has to offer. Inform them of what latest project your group has undertaken; but, be sure not to ramble on with no point in sight. Keep it short, crisp, and informative and include both a text URL ([url=http://]) and a written one (http://www). Keep the content of your message humble, not arrogant. You want them to join, not visa versa. Note: If they send you back a flaming PM for “spamming” them, apologize and move on. Don’t get hung up in a PM war between you and someone who frankly doesn’t matter on the path of success for your group.

Advertising in the Classifieds:
* Bungie.net has a forum just for promoting your group. Post a pre-scripted ad on the Classifieds once or twice a day to raise awareness of your cause and encourage your members to do the same. This is a slow way of getting members, but overtime, your diligence will pay off.

Allying with Other Groups:
* Here is a step to take only when you have enough members to help benefit other groups. Find groups that are as large or larger than yours, and begin the process of a group alliance. PM their leader and ask the question. The details of an alliance are as follows: you put a link to their site on your homepage, and they do likewise with the result being your members joining their group and posting there, and visa versa.

* While this is an easy way to get members, the relationship must be maintained. You must keep up with your ally member-wise, or they will loose interest, and disown you. Also, you must reply to and post in their forums as well as yours. This keeps the relationship strong and with time and more alliances, you will be the biggest group in town, especially with quality content.

[Edited on 8/17/2005]

  • 08.17.2005 2:13 PM PDT
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Step 3: The Extras Down the Line (Group Website, etc)
* Take the path of the Group Website only when your site has amassed the funds either through donations, your own money or both. The last thing you want is for your group website to never pick off the ground, so this stage should only be undertaken when you have a significant amount of members and a large amount of high quality content.

* Also important along the Group Website road is the legal aspects. If you plan to sell your video content, you will need a signed agreement from an authorized Bungie Studios (or Microsoft) corporate lawyer or officer. If you are a minor, you can have your legal guardians (generally parents) sign in your stead. If you start selling any Halo content on your site (under copywrite protection), you will run the risk of Microsoft filing legal action. Also be very careful when posting images on your site of Halo content. As per the Bungie.net Term s of Use:
* “Unless otherwise specified, the Bungie Web Sites are for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, (show on your website) perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, (modify) transfer, or sell any information, software, products or services obtained from the Bungie Web Sites.

* Be careful in this stage, if your site becomes very successful, Bungie/Microsoft will require you to sign an agreement to allow you usage of their intellectual property (Halo and its supporting images). Note that this guide is not trying to stop you from being creative, but the last thing you want is for your site to go down in court.

The Don’t of Group Making:
Besides intellectual property theft and copywrite violation (above), here are some basic don’t of group making which as a Bungie.net regular, you should know:

Promotion on Zanzibar, New Mombassa, etc:
* Don’t promote your group any forums besides the Classifieds. The Classifieds is your designated advertisement zone, don’t venture out of it or you are likely to become temporarily banned (one week).

Group Wars:
* A group war is where one group has done something to offend another group. The offended groups goes to measures to “bring the hurt” onto the offender from tactics ranging from spam bombing to flaming. Besides the point that spam is a considerable offense on Bungie.net, don’t bother getting involved in a group war. It is a waste of your time which could be spent promoting, and it gives your group a bad name.

Misspelling:
* Poor spelling is unacceptable when it comes to things that could be considered official (including but not limited to stickies, homepages, and news submissions). When you have only a few seconds to convince a new face that your group is the right one for them, a homepage or news submissions of a sloppy nature isn’t very convincing. Keep the misspellings to a minimum when at all possible.

Conclusion:
With that I leave you with the tips and tricks to getting your group going. PM me if you have any questions, and tell me when your group reaches fifty members and I’ll happily join and take a look!

Cheers,
m00zor campycow

Special Thanks to:
Tech0ne7

[Edited on 8/17/2005]

  • 08.17.2005 2:13 PM PDT
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<Reserved for Edits>

  • 08.17.2005 2:15 PM PDT
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This is a great guide, no wonder we are so successful.

  • 08.17.2005 2:41 PM PDT
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Yeah that's my hope...tell me if it helps you out.

  • 08.17.2005 2:56 PM PDT
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This should be in The Septagon. But I guess I can't complain all that much about a smart, well thought out post in Zanzibar of all places.

  • 08.17.2005 3:03 PM PDT
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Thank you for the compliment...hopefully a moderator or admin will move it for me if they get a chance.

  • 08.17.2005 3:05 PM PDT
Subject: Official Guide to Group Making
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Table of Contents:

Introduction
-Step One: Making Your Group
► Planning the Group: Part I
* Group Subject
* Naming Your Group
►Planning the Group: Part II
* Group Motto
* Write Your Group Rules
* Group Description
* Group Location
►Preparing Your Group: Step 3
* Setting up the Homepage
* Preparing the Forums
* Security Roles/Ranking System
►Preparing Your Group: Step 4
* Preliminary Moderator Staff:
* Creating Your Content:
-Step 2: Advertising
►Signature Advertisements
►PMing
►Advertising in the Classifieds
►Allying with Other Groups
-Step 3: The Extras Down the Line (Group Website, etc)
►Promotion on Zanzibar, New Mombassa, etc:
►Group Wars:
►Misspelling
Conclusion


[Edited on 8/17/2005]

  • 08.17.2005 2:12 PM PDT
Subject: The Un-Official Guide to Group Making
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Great guide.

  • 08.17.2005 3:12 PM PDT
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It's a good guide but Chapter Founders is there for a reason.

  • 08.17.2005 3:13 PM PDT
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A good point..but still I find quite a few groups failing where they shouldn't...so I composed this.

  • 08.17.2005 3:16 PM PDT
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Thank you, again: I hope it benefits someone.

  • 08.17.2005 3:21 PM PDT
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If this is already in your guide, sorry.

One thing I would add is that if you are going to advertise in your signature, you need to be a good poster on the forums.

  • 08.17.2005 3:26 PM PDT
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Very true. Especially not spam...no one likes that at all. Let me edit that, thanks for the suggestion. =D

  • 08.17.2005 3:30 PM PDT
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that should be an official guide good one campycow

  • 08.17.2005 3:35 PM PDT

Wow, words cannot express my feelings right now- you did a wonderfull job. Mind if I put this in one of the help databases in Chapter Founders? It would be a nice thing to have.

  • 08.17.2005 3:48 PM PDT
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Banshee yuo can. I speak for m00z on this one. he would love to know it was psoted elsewhere. actually ill call him. and then edit my post.

ok he said he would PM you with the details..

[Edited on 8/17/2005]

  • 08.17.2005 4:00 PM PDT
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Posted by: Banshee Barron
Wow, words cannot express my feelings right now- you did a wonderfull job. Mind if I put this in one of the help databases in Chapter Founders? It would be a nice thing to have.


lol I PMed you about it, get back to me when you can.

m00z

  • 08.17.2005 4:17 PM PDT
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thanks that helped alot with my new group

  • 08.17.2005 4:58 PM PDT
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You are absolutely welcome! I'm glad my guide helped someone.

  • 08.17.2005 5:07 PM PDT
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Yes it's very well written.

  • 08.17.2005 5:51 PM PDT

[MjolnirTactics][Midsphere]
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
▀▄▀▄ Strategy, Competition, & Achievements for Halo & Beyond ▄▀▄▀
████▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒░░░░ Mjolnir Battle Tactics ░░░░▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▓████

Move it to the setagon and this could be a sticky. Alot of people never join Chapter Founders and this is a good way to help them.

  • 08.17.2005 6:06 PM PDT

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