Hey everyone, I think I know most people who have posted here so far, but there are some people I haven't met, so... a typical introduction thread. smile

I'm Window, I have no capacity to be brief, I joined Gaia at the end of 2004 because a friend at school urged me to (at least partly to justify his use of my laptop to access it during class). He got me to join VTOG - Villains Taking Over Gaia - a guild he was active in with a great sense of fun and macabre humour. heart

A couple of months later the captain, Kaleadra, became less active on Gaia, and she made me captain. So I found out about the Captains' Guild, and started keeping an eye on things there. Later I started offering guild ratings, and that ran for a while until I began falling behind due to schoolwork. I did, however, make a guide for captains to share most of what I'd picked up from the rating. And most of the advice I gave out in rating was based on how well things were going in VTOG.

I tried to quit Gaia to focus on schoolwork, and succeeded only in handing over VTOG's captaincy to voxule, whose able leadership continues now. I failed at actually quitting, though, and stayed addicted to the Captains' Guild. I was invited to become a Dedicated Moderator (now Site Moderators) in 2006 when I was fifteen, and accepted it a few months later, after I got back from an exchange in Canada and turned sixteen. I immediately assigned myself to the GGN, and while I was completely slack with the GGN report queue, I usually stayed active in the CG, replying to help threads when I could and moderating the forum as well. I also discussed the GGN and the CG often with other moderators, and over time I learned a lot about the right ways and the wrong ways to go about this! I worked with Loki, Alex and Nana to organise subforums for the CG based on what we thought captains would like.

As a result of moderating I gained an appreciation for Gaia's scope (it's quite big), as before I mainly kept to VTOG and the CG. Now I keep an eye on many other places in the main forums. I assigned myself to GCD, too, which gave me a sense of how forum cultures differ from guild ones.

I stepped down from modding a few weeks ago to focus on final exams at school, but if the admins will have me back I'd love to rejoin in the near-ish future. ^^

I post really long journal entries about the GGN, which is great because nobody can tell you that you are too demanding or impertinent when it is your own journal. smile

I think guilds are the best feature on Gaia and I want to stay involved with the network of captains because they're the real stars of the GGN. Their vision and leadership are cause so many great communities to populate the place, and I want to stay a part of that and help as many captains as possible to create the guilds they want.

Oh, and I'm currently 18, I live in Sydney, Australia, and I change my avatar at Easter, Halloween and Christmas. =) I've also run a graphic design shop and a Flash profile auction, and I maintained a quiet 'Guild Services' forum a few years ago to get an idea for what kinds of things captains thought would help them most. I have an ambitious list of ideas for guilds I want to start in the future, and I want to write a new best practices guide and start guild rating again. When there's time!