I know many of you have seen this issue in guilds. If your younger the older members seem to act like they are owed something. That they need you to do it their way or when they want you to. For the older members it looks like the young members don't have any respect for or ownership in the guild. They are simply there to get their loot.
The solution in our guild this week was to gkick three applicants because they were not fitting in.
Since I'm older I find that I don't get a lot of perspective given to me from the younger players. Also, since I'm mostly just the guild smart ass people may not see me as a person who can assist them in working through an issue.
My rant today is that neither is right. The older players need to remind themselves that a big part of a healthy community is providing feedback and mentorship to new and younger members. They also need to recognize when their own thinking can be the problem.
The younger players need to be able to choose a mentor and seek out an elder to help them. They need to take ownership of learning and getting the mentors they need.
The role of "elder" in American society is so lost, because parents and adults are letting the media raise kids, that the natural relationships that should be forming in everyones lives are not. So the MMORPG brings the older and younger members together and there is no framework to operate in.
I don't know what will evolve but I know that the community will correct itself to resolve the conflicts and issues. The question is what are the new communities going to be based on. Guilds perhaps are a part of it. This portal is about information exchange. How will it and other community networking systems help? The challenge is to each individual to be both a participant in learning and a mentor.
Great post. Permission to duplicate at my site www.gmtristan.com?
Thanks
Sun Aug 05 2007 8:15AMMMORPG.com writes:
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