Aurora's LHM posed a valuable question to me in the previous member whore condemnation thread, he asked me: "This value of rank and title however would be significantly decreased if you then allowed the New York leaders to member whore. How would this practice stand anything other than at odds with their supposed rank and title?" The reason I don't count member whoring as an offense that is a strike against a crewleader's good name is legitimate in my eyes and will not change. I will elaborate.

If I judged and killed based on member whoring, you would all be dead. If I held everyone accountable for member whoring I would be burying about 90% of the site. That is why I will not and cannot accept member whoring as a killable offense (much to my lovely RHM's displeasure).

Now you all throw your hands up and you say to me, "Thomas Rourke we do no such thing!" But you do. You absolutely, unequivocally do. What lorrie did was just an endgame to something that is much more insidious and has woven itself into the fabric of who you all are as leaders and members. I honestly hope this post wakes some of you up to this bullshit stance that has been adopted today in an effort to dogpile one leader.

Many weeks back, the Associates feature was introduced. The Associates feature was supposed to revolutionize the Role-Play chain of command. No more would letters requesting invites be fielded by a Crewleader, but instead by an eager crew member hoping to bring someone into the fold of a family. This feature was the suggestion of a player supported HEAVILY by players, and yet, there it is somewhere by the wayside. In my eyes, no leader who has existed after that feature was enabled has utilized it in a remotely effective manner.

If as a leader, you have invited friends without so much as a nod or a glance: You are a member whore. If as a leader, you have received an eloquent invite request and oblige the person with an invite: You are a member whore. Every day you are all guilty of it. The moment you do not defer an invite request (even the most well-written and role-played) to an associate sponsor then you are guilty of member whoring. A leader should, in theory, be insulted that a lowly thug thinks they can approach a bold and ask for an invite. Yet most of the time, you oblige without giving a second thought to a feature that was introduced to preserve the role-play inside the game.

At no time (unless there are homeless from a crew with a leader that has died) should a leader EVER send out an invite to another player when the leader has someone above Made Man that is eligible to be an associate sponsor. We asked for this feature, haven't used it, and now we have actual leaders asking people to join their crew. This is not one leader's fault, it is everyone's fault. 90% of you are guilty of member whoring or supporting member whoring on a daily basis without knowing it. 99.9% of us have been guilty at one point or another.

You have all used the outrage from a RP perspective to lambast a leader here today without any regard to the fact that you or your leader are guilty of the same thing. Martha Houdini said she remembered a time when member whores were disgraced and killed. I ask you now... Knowing what you are guilty of... Do you still agree?

If so, drop Butt Ox a mail. I'm sure he'd be glad to help.

Personally I have yet to send out an invite to anyone, Unless I get personally approached with a decent invitaion request, then it will stay that way for a long time.

If member whoring is acceptable nowdays, so be it. That doesnt not mean I will follow suit. What other crews do is their buisness, and in all honesty I dont care that much.

I think we'd love to play thigns out as they SHOULD be done and how I'd love to see things happen. The role play standard set and people abiding by it.

However, for the sake of our site and game, we need to allow these lowly thugs who haven't a clue as to the way things should be done to approach leaders and be introduced to the game. The associates feature helps with this, yes, but we still need every active member we can. I'm sure admin would step in as soon as something that we are implicating into our characters lives, such as turning the newer people away in case they get dirt on your shoes, that started to decrease or slow down the number of members sticking around and raising the number of inactives.

We already have around 50 people a day falling inactive, 1,500 a month, at the least.

As much as I hail role playing out everything to a T, we can only take it so far, there must be a tolerance on some level of how members are recruited. To me, a crew leader copying the recent characters list into their send invite box is irresponsible and is only an attempt to get more members to fall inactive within their family.

I'd do things properly if I were bolded. True story.

Oh my bad. I wasn't aware that me replying to someone who mails me first was considered member whoring. I'll keep that in mind when I reject them and tell them to seek out my Captain if they are looking to work for Las Vegas.

Might as well go ahead and shoot me now for being a member whore.

To be completely honest, in my opinion there is a distinct difference in "member whoring" and extending an invite to someone who has approached you first and seems like they would fit in well with your organization. I don't think you can call the latter member whoring.

I've spent time composing a somewhat lengthy response to this that will hopefully demonstrate why, whilst a valid point on the incorrect method currently governing invitations from an RP perspective, this thread does not in fact answer my original question. The question, which encouraged a thread of its own, this beautifully titled number, was: This value of rank and title however would be significantly decreased if you then allowed the New York leaders to member whore. How would this practice stand anything other than at odds with their supposed rank and title?"

The first reason you have given as to why member whoring is not viewed as a strike against a crew leader's good name is because 90% of the site would then have to be killed if it became one. The logic behind this is because of the Associates feature and a vast proportion of the site could potentially issue invites to new members and as the leaders in question are not utilising this feature as it was intended, by being engaged in any sort of mailing at all with anyone seeking sponsorship, they are therefore a member whore.

This is not a reasonable conclusion to reach. The reason for this is explained by the two basic terms integral to this discussion: invite and member whore. Your logic on this is that any involvement for a leader at all in the invitation process means they are member whoring. They aren't. They are offering invites to those who have made some effort, hopefully by contacting them. The reason this isn't member whoring is because inviting and member whoring are not the same thing. Member whoring is where a leader is actively seeking to lure as many people into their HQ as quickly as possible to raise numbers, regardless of any requisite requirement. An invite is offered on the basis of the requisite criterion being fulfilled by this potential member. The whore (no requisite requirement), actively seeking anyone and everyone in a bid to boost numbers, epitomized by cold inviting someone (no communication at all) has no criteria. Not employing an associate does therefore not make a leader a member whore just by issuing an invite or being involved in the process, because they are not whoring. They are inviting someone who has met the requisite requirement and choosing to invite them as a result of this.

I could agree with you if the question was: The value of rank and title however would be significantly decreased if you then allowed the New York leaders to directly invite. How would this practice stand anything other at odds with their supposed rank and title? I could do this because by flouting the associate system they are engaged in activities someone of their supposed rank and title is not supposed to be involved in. It would therefore then be a legitimate argument that every leader is guilty of this and thus it can be omitted from the overall dignitas of rank and title. However, due to the distinction between the two activities, the question is about member whoring and not every leader is guilty of member whoring. Therefore 90% of the game would not have to be killed and it would only be the ones who are guilty of committing this act. On this basis I do not feel this is a valid reason to accept member whoring.

Similarly the rest of your reasons for accepting member whoring are based on the conclusion that by being involved in the act of invitation a leader is a member whore. As I've said above, this isn't a reasonable conclusion as these are not the same thing.

I feel that because inviting and member whoring are not the same that only a leader who actually member whores is guilty of being a member whore and thus would be punishable. I'd like to see the member whoring end immediately. I wouldn't even care if it was introduced retrospectively or not and punishment was meted out to those who have been guilty of it, because judging by the responses to the previous thread discussing this, they didn't appreciate what they were actually doing was incorrect. A bullet is not necessarily the best way to educate these leaders on where they are going wrong, although it would beyond doubt set an example.

Therefore I still do not think member whoring is acceptable. Whilst I agree that we would be extremely hypocritical if we did not omit leaders inviting people as possible detractions from their rank and title, I still cannot see how member whoring is in any way not detrimental to the value placed on rank and title.

~T~

It's one of the areas I won't budge on. You made a lot of good points and they're all relevant, but it's like Democrats and Republicans, you fall on one side of certain MR issues and usually you will stay there. I view things, and teach the leaders under me to view things, in a black and white manner.

This wasn't a thread supporting or denouncing member whoring, at least it wasn't meant to be. It was meant to highlight the hypocrisy of the people who immediately jumped on a leader today who sent out an unsolicited invite. When you really break down what member whoring is at its various levels as I said before, we can all find instances we'd be guilty of. Yet those aren't considered when there's a public stoning to be performed.

See rank and title aren't uniformly earned in each city. In the game I'm the Godfather of New York. I set rules, requirements, and guidelines for the people of the city to operate in. So long as the people in the city adhere to the parameters I've laid out, they earn the ranks they get with room to spare. I have no rule on member whoring, so the leaders of the city can approach that how they want without getting the evil eye from me or soiling their reputation in my city. If I frowned on member whoring and banned it and New Yorkers did it anyway then they'd be doing a disservice to the rank they've earned in New York.

The term "member whoring" is far too ambiguous. This discussion's been done a million times, and each time it involves people interpreting the term in their own way to suit their stance. Lets face it, ideally, every crew leader wants to be working at their HQ capacity with good quality members if they can. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If we are using Thomas' definition of member whoring, I see nothing wrong with it. It's generally accepted that there has to be some give in this game, we can't RP everything to an exacting standard, and that includes Thugs joining families. At some point, there has to be dialogue between the street bum and a bold (or now Made Men). Most people prefer the bum to be pro-active, to do the ground work and approach a family once he's chosen one that looks attractive to him.

The thing is though, most people I've ever spoken to don't define member whoring as Thomas has here.

I think everyone knows exactly what the issue is, and that is completely unsolicited invites. No interest in who they are inviting, no interest in their attributes, no interest in anything, except a head count and often a free kill when said member goes IA. Like it or not, it's a factor. In some cases, in an attempt to appear as if they're not whoring, the CL will fire over a mobmail first to ask if they want in, but there's no difference, it's still whoring. 

Using the associate system properly doesn't get around the problem either. If they're instructed to whore, they can still whore. The only way around it is to ensure it is the onus is on the street bum to do the work by looking at which family they feel they could work with. The only way I can think to do that is how it's often been done...crew leaders/RHs etc can't approach bums.

It may be the case that it's too far down the line for that, or that the current GFs don't want to implement something like that (as Thomas has said), so there's little that can be done really, beyond that. Those against it are effectively relying on leaders to police themselves, which only results in imbalance when others that have no standards take advantage by filling up ridiculously quick.

What causes CLs to send unsolicited invites like they were handing out free cookies is another issue, but the number of families around must play a role. Whilst it's good for people to be getting their chance, the competition for members has done nothing to help on the whoring front.

I can think of an instance in the streets about 3 months ago about someone using and putting that "Associate" program to use. Even though no one has used it. Must be cause she was someone of unimportance? Or cause the thread got ten replies, very little reconition. So it didn't stay 1st page long. Either way, it was used and implimented. Not everyone that has been a leader  or is a leader now member whores. Just cause one does it, does not make it right or okay. I heard to many replies about "So and So does it, Im not naming no name, but alot do it...". Who fucking cares if they do it? I will tell you what my dad always told me. If that idiot wants to jump off a bridge are you going to follow them? I think not. Have some common sense? Don't try to put the blame on others, as Rourke said own up and take your own blame. Fix it, change it whatever, and do differently. Don't jump on the band wagon for the new fad, or because so and so is doing it. Be your own person, leaders don't follow they lead.