Discussion | AIN Membership Reform

Once again the question of tightening membership requirements has been raised, this time at last weekend's Western Hemisphere Meeting. Several members were concerned that we could become the Union for rejected SCJU applicants, which would lead us to a "quantity over quality" reputation, which would push away talented applicants who want to be in a strong union.
With the loss of Neil's CJ recently and Peter's exit in the next few months, we are losing several high-class members, which is another reason why we need to examine the Membership procedure again.

So - where does it need to be tightened, and does the Checklist need to be edited again?

(NOTE: This is a discussion, after we had to move on from the issue at the meeting, and agreed to further it here, with other members)

Points made:

~ Realism moves from supplementary requirement to essential.
~ Growth potential, custom transport networks (airports, seaports) and city layout to join supplementary requirement list.
~ Promote the Union with new adverts and posters across Simtropolis, SC4Devotion and other Sc4 websites.

We have to look at the quality of the cities themselves. For example, these factors have to be considered:

-Maxis-Custom Content ratio
-City layout
-Realism (i.e seawalls in major cities)
-Presence of custom airport
-Presence of custom seaport
-Track record
-Growth potential

kccl35 wrote:We have to look at the quality of the cities themselves. For example, these factors have to be considered:

-Maxis-Custom Content ratio
-City layout
-Realism (i.e seawalls in major cities)
-Presence of custom airport
-Presence of custom seaport
-Track record
-Growth potential

Well the content ratio is already a requirement, but realism is only a supplementary requirement. None of the others are on the checklist. What do you mean by growth potential?

Also, we have removed the "yes with improvement" vote, so do you all think that will make it a fairer system, with less of a guarantee on admittance into the union?

Don't mind me if i quote Fairview. To be honest, its not very realistic at all. The roads are bumpy, there are too many maxis buildings in the cities and then, there's no seawall in his major cities.

For growth potential, i mean the potential to become a great CJ (not like mine), something along the lines of Nyhaven.

Ah, okay. So would you prefer it if the points you posted above were included on one of the checklists too?

Up to you. Voting would be fine

kccl35 wrote:For growth potential, i mean the potential to become a great CJ (not like mine), something along the lines of Nyhaven.

Neither mine. I close it soon due for the lack of intrest.
I think for the future there isnt any update for my ERC journal :-( (Not Starfishland).

Oh, BTW, I can't find the SCJU's website

This:
http://www.12colonies.net/

Thanks

Come to think of it, which matters more? CJ quality or Union Activeness?

It's best if an applicant applies both areas. But what if we have an applicant with only CJ quality and cannot guarantee his or her activeness to AIN?

Miguel, although his CJ quality can be improved on, at least his activeness is there.

Hiigara, although he have great CJ quality, he is barely seen around AIN due to real-life issues.

Sidenote: Miguel and Hiigara are just randomly picked as an example. I did not mean any harm or personal attack.

See the difference?

I believe we should focus on both CJ Quality plus Union Commitment at the same time, not hoping on CJ Quality alone.

The last thing we want is a case where a high quality CJ member join us then MIA for the next few months without informing us.

kccl35 wrote:For growth potential, i mean the potential to become a great CJ (not like mine), something along the lines of Nyhaven.

You mean that the story can continue on? Like it isn't a "Look at this! Now let's move on!" kind of CJ?

[quote="Aranho"I believe we should focus on both CJ Quality plus Union Commitment at the same time, not hoping on CJ Quality alone.[/quote]
For example, emgmod churns out a constant stream of awesome CJ stuff while being active in the union at the same time. Emgmod is a prime example of what an ideal AIN member should be.

Sidenote: I chose myself because I could.

Aran is very right what he is saying about quality and activity need to be in equal balance. The problem is that is even more idealistic than a perfect nation with trixies and hall of fame staus joining once a month or a perfect member such as emgmod.
You need to focus on firstly, attracting higher class members looking a union from the other mainstream unions to us and secondly, keeping activity at a decent level (lets set an ambitious target: a member always online). The way to do the first one is to, yes, tighten the membership requirements and put pressure on our nations to come up to standard but this also needs to be done along with advertising the better images of the union within the wider community (particular on SC4D, ST and SimSports). The AIN has always had an image of the underdog union - now there are only a few mainstream remaining you need to bring across our unique POS
along with showing we have better standards than the others we also need to be present on the community site and unions - not only to draw ties with members personally (not a union tie or anything) but to show we are accessible, nice, friendly people. The AIN always seems to be stuck in this bubble between our forums and Simsports that needs to be broken to make our union seem less of a well, 'scrap heap'. (No offence meant to any members who have unsuccessfully applied).

I think I've found a problem - if an application fails the checklist, it can't go to voting until it is improved. So really, there's no voting until an application is satisfactory, which means that we can't reject applications that are below standards, because they don't pass the first hurdle which is checklists.

Does that make sense? :pale:

Well, It'll be more easy to said that if they don't pass the checklist, they are not accepted. They need to reapply later or never.

Well as I have seen before, If a person has not done anything to abide/follow the rules/checklist they were scrapped, but nothing about if a person had received a bad score (All yellows) until voting.

Yes with improvement was removed from all future polls at the last meeting.
So that's not a problem anymore.

I think CJ Quality is important, in fact we are a lot active, so we need CJ Quality. I don't think it's inactive if someone is going to our Union Site, once a week.

"Emgmod is the perfect member" --> lmao :shock:

:GG:

What we need in a application that is going to be accepted is simple:

- What we were asking since now.
- Past experience at doing a CJ (in ST, SS, SC4Devotion, etc.) [Can be non-obligatory if the applicant is excellent]
- A MAP of his/her nation's location that doesn't overlap a existing nation and if possible, a RL nation (Cuz I don't like nations that goes over a whole country or a too big region. If you want to be with mainland, do as Kevin with Corraile, add terrain, but don't take over it.
- REALISM, that's the most important. Don't put skyscrapers in a city of 10,000... -.-'
- the list that Kevin posted above.
- We need to be strict on the applications, to show that we aren't dealing, we have expectations of our members.
- etc.

^^ amen.

I think we are pretty good at activity (not including myself)

I think we a few small adjustments to the details, you can make huge improvements. Like what was said about bumpy roads and seawalls. Those are easy minor things, but get it wrong and it can look bad.

We just need to tighten up on some of these things and I think that getting rid of the "yes with improvement" is going to be a major plus.

Thanks for the comments guys - keep them coming! I'll summarise everything in bullet points in the first post, so that it doesn't get confusing.

Sky Guy wrote:^^ amen.

Amen with what?

with what you said lol

Julien wrote:- A MAP of his/her nation's location that doesn't overlap a existing nation and if possible, a RL nation (Cuz I don't like nations that goes over a whole country or a too big region. If you want to be with mainland, do as Kevin with Corraile, add terrain, but don't take over it.

Can I add that if you make islands in the ocean, at least make them look realistic? I already know there's island-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean countries out there, and I'm not asking them to move. But I think that new nations should place their islands in a realistic location (or at least look like it matches).

That's a good point - islands in the middle of oceans are really only small volcanic ones, which many aren't in SC4. I think it's another thing with realism.

Well do you think Lanaya is ok where it is?