- Sardonic13
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- Exalted Mythic Member
Posted by: DeeJ
What are the specific personal lures that motivate you to join a group. I would love to see this question answered from a very specific perspective as to WHY you join a group.
The first question I always ask myself when considering joining a new group is "Is this group about something that interests me?" Obviously I'm not going to join a group I'm not interested in.
If I find a group interesting, I then ask myself "What is the true driving force behind the group?" (i.e. "What central theme/idea/action drives the heartbeat and constantly nourishes the group members?").
In my time on bungie.net, I've seen many groups spring into existence essentially stillborn because they didn't have a simple and focused goal/mission/purpose.
Generally speaking, I also don't believe in the sustainability of groups centered only around discussion. While there are exceptions, I've seen many great discussion-centered groups die out simply from an inability to maintain momentum and focus. Discussion-centered groups often rely too heavily on a single leader or small collection of admins to keep the fire stoked. If one or more of the leaders steps away from the group for any reason, the group sees effects immediately and quickly slips into inactivity, often never to recover.
I'm not an artist, so I can't speak to the effectiveness of groups focused around artistic creativity (i.e. map making, Forge, etc.)
I think that the most stable groups are those centered around playing video games regularly. A regular, reliable, and established game time is the easiest way to bring members together and keep them together. While these groups generally also lean heavily on active leaders, it is the reliability of the regular games rather than the formidable, but inevitably exhaustible, enthusiasm and creativity of the admins that keeps the group healthy.
My experience is mostly based on my time in For Carnage Apply Within and The Myth Jumpers. I've seen cyclic highs and lows including departures and changes of admins, loss of old members, influx of new members, group restructurings, and even one complete rebuild. In 7 years, the one constant is that the group thrives when the games are well organized and reliable and the group suffers severely when the games are sporadic or disorganized.
Concerning PMs and their role in group recruiting, I've been on both sides of the issue. I've done more than my fair share of deleting and ignoring random group invites, but I've also sent a few PM group invites. I completely disagree with randomly spamming members with a generic group invite PM. However If I see a member make a post about Myth or looking for people with which to play Marathon, I will often send that member a PM describing FCAW and inviting him to join the group.
[Edited on 12.24.2011 3:10 PM PST]