Day erm..... three?

Ok guys if you haven't realized this by now I'm not a natural blogger. Plus as I said this is about running a guild in real life. Well here is the excuses.... over the last however long as an officer team we decided to bring in some new recruits to deal with the situation that comes up every summer where you lose a silly amount of sign ups to family days out, (the selfish buggers... don't they know that WOW>life? :O ) and scantily clad women, weather they be a wife, girlfriend or that lass from down the street you are stalking with your X-ray goggles you got off E-bay. Anyway due to the recent influx of peeps it has taken a bit more work to keep the guild stable than I anticipated. Couple this with taking Driving lessons and the normal dad things you have to do, package it up into an excuse that appeals to you and accept my nearly apology's :p
To be completely honest i don't have a blog pre-prepared this time so I'm just gonna wing it. This time around I'm going to talk about rulings and what they can do for a guild.
There are several Different things a rule set can do for a guild, not least from a disciplinary point of view. However don't see this point as the only thing that rules are there for. They provide protection for your-self and your officer team and they can be used to help people out at the same time. (Now stop it, that rule, yes that one there, yes the one saying all members MUST donate 200G a day to the guild leader, is not what I meant by helping people.)
What people must realize is that even if a guild doesn't have a rule set written down, there will be rules in place to follow, and to be perfectly honest if you don't write them down, there will ALWAYS end up being someone that trys to exploit you and your guild for all that they can take from you. Its a sad fact of gaming life, but its a fact all the same. This is where the fact that rules can protect you and your guild comes into play. If a rule is written down in black and white (or any other colour if you want) and is enforced fairly across the board (yes that also means the GM's and officers,) then people cannot argue with it. If you have some kind of warning or question on your guild app form ensuring they say they have read the rules. then if people try to argue then its a simple enuff reply. Its in the rules you read em and agreed to em now deal with it :p
However remember that what seems reasonable and fair to one person isn't to another so its best if you make your rule-sets up as part of a team. Believe me when I took over the guild I run (OK OK OK sorry sorry sorry I'll tell em) ahem I've been told to tell you I HELP run it. :p Anyway when that happened I was handed a set of rulings alongside. Those were basic rulings and took a group of about six people about two months to draft agree and finalise. And we are STILL amending and adding rulings where needed. A good rule-set should be flexible and never set completely in stone. Situations will always arise that you don't expect and your rules should be able to evolve to accommodate these situations. As it is I have known new rules or amendments take up to 3 weeks of intense (I try to avoid the word argument) discussion before being finalized and put into effect, just so it is fair and reflects the aims of your guild.
After you have your rule-set in place then you MUST enforce it to every member in the guild or you will completely negate the strength that having these rules gives you as a guild. As we show in my guild when you apply all the rules to even the Guild master and the officers people are more likely to accept them as they then know (and this is the important part) that you will never ask anyone to follow a ruling that you would not yourself.
So what can rules do for a guild? Well the answer as I have tryed to show, is that if applied properly and fairly, they will help in a big way towards making a happy stable guild. (hmmmm this ending sounds slightly like it was written by a stunned choir boy I may have to edit this later.)
Anyway till I next get chance to blog Chiow for Now :)