The Perils of Open Recruitment


I don't often talk about the internal workings of Stay Frosty and A Band Apart on the blog. As much as my critics like to bash me for blogging about everything, I typically remain silent on many topics. Which they wouldn't know about, since I'm silent on them. That being the entire point. It works surprisingly well.

I'm going to break the wall a bit on this post and talk about two specific losses that recently happened inside of Stay Frosty. These losses have sadly been replayed across the community, on Twitter, on the Mittani's site, on Reddit, and elsewhere. So they are incredibly public already. So I don't feel the need to sugar-coat anything, or protect a Corp mates pride. Instead I'd like to use them to illustrate several points about our Corporation and how we try to handle situations like this that sometimes arise.

If you are not already aware, I am referring to this Phantasm loss and the Pod, and then last night's other Phantasm loss, which was even worse. Just for a little perspective, the character is 4-8 on the killboard. Already he has lost about half of the Isk that I have lost in SEVEN YEARS of playing Eve.

Let's take a step back. From day one Stay Frosty has been Open Recuitment. You put an application in and you get accepted. That is the entire application process. If the character is extremely young, we try to talk to them and make sure they know what they are getting into. Some very young players thrive and some do not. I believe in the "sink or swim" process, either you get it and get involved, or you don't. Most do. But Stay Frosty is not for everyone and we are not trying to be a one size fits all place to play. That is not our goal.

Over the past two plus years we've seen a few bad eggs. Surprisingly few frankly, given the Open Recruitment policy, but we've had our fair share of trolls, corp thieves, spais, and whatnots. Again, not that many. A half-dozen or so over two years is not bad. In fact I suspect it isn't a rate all that different from those more strict recruitment policy Corporations.

When an incident happens we always attempt to talk to the people or person involved. I believe it is important to give them a chance to explain themselves. I don't know everyone personally and mistakes happen. Mostly they turn out to be trolls with an axe against me to grind, or an alt of someone that is strangely out to get me. One infamous person in particular usually.

I spoke to the Phantasm pilot. Others did as well. As always our pilots receive the benefit of the doubt. We have a 30 day trial for a reason. Normally our pilots in trial receive trial roles, but in this case I withheld those roles. While his explanations could be true, they also could be lies. It is always hard to tell. But, as always, the truth usually comes out eventually. Someone was nice enough to use his first loss as a post on The Mittani's site and the reasons the pilot gave there were different than those given to me.

And then it happened again. This time much worse.

What is that old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. While I encourage our pilots to disregard killboard stats and encourage them to take chances, but even then sometimes things go above and beyond. This is a case like that. This has nothing to do with a stupid loss and everything to do with stupidity.

I don't know this pilot. I don't know his or her story. It could be an alt out to damage our credibility or killboard. It could be any number of things. Doesn't matter. The only thing that does matter is that they are no longer in our Corporation as of this morning.

We can close the door on another weird incident and move on.

When you leave your door open it is important to be able to close it every so often.