Encouraging People to Update Your Roster

by **Rihlsul** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:11 am

I realized I take our guild's use of Roster a bit for granted. We have 219 out of 316 updating, about 70%. Apparently, this is fairly high.

I felt I should probably share some of the strategies we use to encourage our member base to get moving on this, maybe trigger some neat discussion on other ways we can get towards 100% or help other guilds climb up from the lower %'s.

First off, TOTAL BUY-IN from your top people. All the guild leaders and officers should upload their data into Roster at least once. We had a GL who wouldn't get on Roster and a few times we ran into members who figured that it wasn't 'necessary' if the guild leaders didn't do it. If you're just a lone officer in your guild who thinks 'it might be neat to run Roster', but no one else in the guild has yet to learn WHY it's cool, your success rate will be pretty low.

Second off, MAKE IT SIMPLE. Take the time to learn how to pre-configure an Installer of UniUploader so that your members have NOTHING to think about. Setup UniAdmin so you can easily push out the correct versions and right settings. Be prepared for people to 'not get it' and still goof it up in silly little ways that you'll have to help them with, even if they're super savvy.

Next, PUSH IT EVERYWHERE. Make sure you talk it up in guild chat all the time. Link it constantly in your forums. Have LOTS of places on your website that lead back to the UniUploader pre-configured downloader. Get tons of people using SigGen for their signatures so people say 'hey! I want one!'.

GIVE THEM A REASON! Sort out what addons and Roster functionality are useful to your guildmates and make sure 1) they're working and 2) the people who need it KNOW about it. Some fantastic 'lure' add-ons to Roster are the max.Resist (for the gear obsessive) and Missing Recipies (for the folks skilling up professions or recipe obsessed).

SPECIAL BENEFITS - we occasionally run events ONLY for people who are using Uni (or at least upload regularly) - and make sure to be vocal about it. One of our guild bank managers also regularly checks the Missing Recipies to see if anyone needs things just collecting dust and sends it to them.

Optionally, you can even have an 'Initiate' phase that you are required to Upload to Roster to qualify for Membership (along with any normal requirements). We don't do that with our guild, though we do require a forum signup. People still in initiate phase in our guild aren't allowed to request from guild bank, so people are pretty on the ball about meeting 'Initiate' requirements.

Chime in with some of your strategies to get people uploading!

by **Ulminia** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 8:28 am

good ideas... but pushing to hard can result in people leaving the guild and that sucks

by **Rihlsul** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 9:27 am

Heh, well, 'retaining members' is a different topic best saved for chat either via PM or on a Guild Discussion board over at the WoW forums.

But the word of caution is wise. Yes, be aware, some folks who join a guild that so heavily encourages Uni and/or Roster use - if they have issues getting things working - can get frustrated and just not bother, leading to a /gquit. But, my thoughts on that fall under the 'retaining members' discussion.

by **Rihlsul** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:53 am

I've found this button to be highly effective and visible within many templates of my site if anyone wants to lift it. Just link it to your Uni download location of your choice. The color just BEGS 'click me, click me!' (for the folks who can SEE colors).

This one's on black BG, but I have a trans-friendly png for any who'd like it.

by **silencer-ch-au** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:16 pm

1. Our GM is a sort of web designer so I let him install the roster. That leads to it being his 'baby' and him promoting it like crazy :thumright:

Use the MOTD for that too. If your GM knows a little about installing scripts, let him do it, help him or at least let him do the settings with guidance if necessary, just get him involved so he feels like being the admin of the guild and the roster as well.
2. We have things going like 'get 100FR min by x date and you'll get 15dkp'. That is of course only confirmable by looking at the max.Resist addon screen. Same sorta deal with specific rep etc. (I wish attunements could be displayed)
3. Every time someone asks 'can anyone make item x' he gets the answer: 'look it up on the roster'.
4. Dont ask whats in the guild bank, look it up on the roster and send a mail to the banker. (shame that I dont have enough time to make a new treasury)

These are some of the things we use to get our guildies to see the roster as a valuable resource.
We have profiles of almost all active members now (- 1 or 2 paranoid and a few that just cant install wow addons for some reason except CTRA.. lol, but thats not a gkick issue).

Encouragement with some sort of reward will most likely work better than policing and pressure or even punishment.

by **Splash** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:49 pm

We use it - all officer-grade members use it already, there are a few being resistant to it, but they're the same people who are resistant to using our forums too. We have a pretty simple rule - if people don't install the relevant addin and use the guild forums they won't progress above a certain rank. While it may seem a nazi tactic it generally works.

One of the other things is that most members of the guild who have seen the roster and all the functionality it brings pretty much immediately go "wow!" and get their addin installed. We've had issues with jUniUploader not working for a couple of Mac users, but they're fine to upload the .lua via the roster (as are a few Windows users who are loathe of installing something if they can get away without doing so!)

When I first setup the roster I took all the officers to one side over Teamspeak and talked them through exactly how it works, what issues people might have (uploading the wrong .lua seems to be the number one issue!) and why we should be using the roster - this means that whenever anyone is online they can get help with the addin and UU - this helps uptake too.

Great thread though - I'll be happy to see other people's tactics at increasing uptake - we have 170-ish users with around 100 using the roster so far (we're getting there...)

by **sedrikk** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:28 pm

We encourage use in one of my guilds by only allowing those that keep the roster up to date to roll on rare patterns from MC and such. This way it is always listed in the made by addon.

by **mrmuskrat** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:48 am

Rihlsul wrote:I've found this button to be highly effective and visible within many templates of my site if anyone wants to lift it. Just link it to your Uni download location of your choice. The color just BEGS 'click me, click me!' (for the folks who can SEE colors).

[ http://www.ironcladgathering.com/images/getUni.gif ]

This one's on black BG, but I have a trans-friendly png for any who'd like it.

My wife added it to our front page!

http://bunniesfromhell.info

by **joehail** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:34 am

IF I could figure out how to customize the Uniuploader, I would offer it to my guild

I just can't for the life of me figure it out.

If somone were willing to possible either walk me through it, or even maybe set one up for me, I would greatly appreciate it

by **mashed** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:03 pm

We have every one on a 2 week trial period in which we take them in all the end game instances, after the trial period hasd past and they have been accepted in to the guild we then ban them from all raids until they have uploaded to the roster, it is then the job of the class leader to push that person on to the roster, and talk them through anything they are not sure of.

But i must admit it really does help having the uniuploader pre configured to our guild.

by **DXduhman** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:08 am

mashed wrote:We have every one on a 2 week trial period in which we take them in all the end game instances, after the trial period hasd past and they have been accepted in to the guild we then ban them from all raids until they have uploaded to the roster, it is then the job of the class leader to push that person on to the roster, and talk them through anything they are not sure of.

But i must admit it really does help having the uniuploader pre configured to our guild.

by **DXduhman** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:10 am

Not sure why my question didn't post..

Anyway, by 'pre configured', what do you mean? Is that a special setup?

by **mashed** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:32 pm

you can see full instructions on how to edit the uniuploader specifically for your guild, then distribute it to your members to save the hassle of having to talk each of them through it one by one

http://www.wowroster.net/wiki/index.php ... stribution

by **Elethil** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:34 am

What I did for my guild was write an installer app that installs CP, pvplog, and GP addons to there addon directory. It also installs the uniuploader a dir in there wow directory with the modified ini file so the uploader is all setup for them to upload to our website. I just update it as new version come out. All then they need to do is download my installer and install it to there pc. Tehn they just run uniuploader and click upload. tha'ts about as easy I could make it for them.

by **mfoley** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:41 pm

One thing that would help, and I've run into this problem several times, is to clarify the Update instructions provided in the install. There's no indication that the user needs to switch contexts and browse to their SavedVariables folder...many people are going to interface\addons\CharacterProfiler\CharacterProfiler.lua because that is the only path that is mentioned in the instructions.

The absence of an error message when uploading this file further complicates the issue and leads to a lot of confusion and frustration on the part of guild officers trying to get their folks to upload.

I would suggest clarifying the instructions in the next release.

Can someone tell me where the updating instructions are coming from so that I can modify it for our guild?

EDIT: Nevermind...I found the instructions in the enUS.php file.