Recruitment Screening and Espionage

[Arguile]

Hello All..

I had been flirting with the idea with creating a guild; however all the headaches of security loop holes, screening honorable applicants and making sure they adhere to charters, bombarded me all at the same time. I totally empathize with the efforts the guild leaders and site admins here deal with everyday.

I do want some experienced input however. I will be honest I have done alot of reconnasance work for other guilds and have infiltrated many in the past with other MMORPG's. Its a matter of covering your tracks and acting as honorable as possible to that guild while performing your duties as a double agent or even quadruple agent. As a guild leader you get frustrated that you start to view every applicant as a plant and throw your hands up in the air and accept that its bound to happen sometime. Should I be so strict with screening or would I rather spend time in game.

As a guild leader if you did your background checks and discovered that one of your applicants was indeed a mole and found out what guild he was in what would you do?

How would the opposing Guild Leader treat this infraction if one of his guildmates were caught? Or would the guild leader just offer a lame apology and move on?

Should there be Universal Guild Conduct within MMO's? Or is it Impossible?

NOTE: Most website admins have capabilities to ban email and IP and username however some infiltrators can be pretty determined.

Poll. Thanks for the input Guild Leaders.

[-Strife-]

I think you would get better discussion off the community or RP forums...

[Arguile]

I think you would get better discussion off the community or RP forums...


Its guild conduct related thats why I put it here:)
I see your point though.

[Landrew]

Hello All..

I had been flirting with the idea with creating a guild; however all the headaches of security loop holes, screening honorable applicants and making sure they adhere to charters, bombarded me all at the same time. I totally empathize with the efforts the guild leaders and site admins here deal with everyday.

I do want some experienced input however. I will be honest I have done alot of reconnasance work for other guilds and have infiltrated many in the past with other MMORPG's. Its a matter of covering your tracks and acting as honorable as possible to that guild while performing your duties as a double agent or even quadruple agent. As a guild leader you get frustrated that you start to view every applicant as a plant and throw your hands up in the air and accept that its bound to happen sometime. Should I be so strict with screening or would I rather spend time in game.

As a guild leader if you did your background checks and discovered that one of your applicants was indeed a mole and found out what guild he was in what would you do?

How would the opposing Guild Leader treat this infraction if one of his guildmates were caught? Or would the guild leader just offer a lame apology and move on?

Should there be Universal Guild Conduct within MMO's? Or is it Impossible?

NOTE: Most website admins have capabilities to ban email and IP and username however some infiltrators can be pretty determined.

Poll. Thanks for the input Guild Leaders.

One good way to find out is to see how active the mole really is in guild and have your offciers be required to be on a voice commo system. Moles are usually over active or not as active, hardly ever in-between.

Oblivion has about 7 layers of internal security; no one knows everything unless they are the guild leader.

One more thing is to have an unit/office for security, I have very trusted members as internal security. All they do is look out for moles and suspicious activites.

Hope that helps and yes I have caught a few already here in DnL!

By the way, if there are any moles out there; I know who you are, and we will be tracking you...

*salute*

[Rubiade]

Well, i am a guildleader for many years, so i had some spies in my guild(s) also.
The best of em was even 1 of my officers and became 1 of my best friends ingame. One day he told me that he is a spy and what guild he did this job for. He appologied and said that he prefer to stay with us and break his relation to the other guild. We accepted him even he was a spy and never regret this.
There were others i found out about and when i knew that member x was a spy, i let him in and sometimes i used him to trap my enemy. Then i kicked him.
I learned that a strong guild dont have to fear spies.

There are some signs that can be an indicator for a spy:
a member tries to cause drama often
a member evades always pvp
a member starts intrigues

[Oakstead]

I agree with the others that knowledge segmentation is the hallmark of a successfull guild.

If a spy is not too active he will not reach levels of trust, if is is highly active for a short period of time he will not reach levels of trust, if he is highly active for a long period of time he will reach a level of trust but he will have provided us with wealth and kills in return. So for the knowledge he gains I think that is an even trade.

[Jixxala]

I agree with the others that knowledge segmentation is the hallmark of a successfull guild.

If a spy is not too active he will not reach levels of trust, if is is highly active for a short period of time he will not reach levels of trust, if he is highly active for a long period of time he will reach a level of trust but he will have provided us with wealth and kills in return. So for the knowledge he gains I think that is an even trade.

I agree with many of the above, but Oakstead says it best. We have had spies over time. They rarely have been a problem. Internal security is very important.

A basic of military intelligence is that misinformation is more valuable than no information ... to the person spreading it. If you know a person is a spy, use them. Don't ban them, at least not immediately. It is not 100% honorable to use them to decive an enemy, but hey the enemy was dishonest enough to send a spy in the first place so...

Most spys are very easy to spot, the ones that are not pay for their skills with time and contribution to the guild. We have had good enemy spies that provided more to the guild than bad members. Really no worries IF you have internal security and a good web admin. If you have 3-4 people you really trust you are all set.