Recruitment Policy
The Dominion of the Sword team has decided to enact a new recruitment policy.
In the past we had an “open door” policy wherein almost any applicant was accepted regardless of skill level. The rationale behind this was that it was motivation and dedication – not prior experience – that determined the quality of a team member. Unfortunately, this open door policy lead to the rise of “modding tourism.” We welcomed hordes of two-day, two-post members who joined simply because they thought modding would be cool but left the minute any kind of work was demanded of them. The vast majority of our new members joined without any appreciation of the great work ethic and time commitment that modding demands. Often senior members would take time off from their current projects to train new members only for these members would leave upon discovering that modding was simply too much work. The net result was that these members were essentially contributing a negative amount of work to the mod. Senior members sacrificed their time to help these members, but these members contributed nothing to the mod in return.
As a result, we have decided that we will now limit recruitment to applicants with prior modding experience, as only those with prior modding experience can be known to appreciate the serious commitment that working on a mod team requires.
There will now be two paths to participation in the DotS development process: full membership for those who are able to demonstrate a basic command of modding and partial membership for those who help to complete research tasks posted on the TWC forums by DotS staff.
We will set the bar rather low with regard to modding expertise as we know that the pool of available mod talent is very small. It is not important to us how much applicants know about modding, but rather that they know anything at all. We simply want to see that prospective members have an appreciation of the dedication required to mod and that they have already shown initiative by taking it upon themselves to learn the basics of modding.
Each Dominion of the Sword department will decide on a minimum skillset for prospective applicants. Those who are motivated will teach themselves these skills with the material we provide and the assistance of other modders in the Mod Workshop. Applicants will then have to pass an exam to prove that they have mastered the basics of the given field. Those who pass the exam will be admitted to the mod team. These exams will be administered on an individual basis. Those who wish to attempt the exams should PM a member of the DotS department to which they wish to apply.
Those who do not have time to learn modding can still participate in the development process. Periodically, various staff members will outsource portions of mod development (primarily research) to the DotS fans in this forum. Those who contribute most to these requests for help will be rewarded with special mentions in the mod credits. They will not, however, become full members of the mod.
This procedure is only for those who do not already have modding experience. Those who do already have modding experience can PM a member of the mod team with a short description of their abilities and portfolio of their work.
For more informtion, PM the leader of the department in which you are interested.
Departments (Dept Leaders in Parenthesis):
Audio (Hross, SpaceEd)
Campaign Research (Hross, SpaceEd, Copperknickers, Brennas)
Cinematics (Hross)
Frontend (Hross)
Mapping (Resurrection)
Mapping Research (SpaceEd, Brennas, Resurrection)
Modeling and Texturing (Sumskilz)
Scripting (Azim)
Tech Tree Coding (Uanime5)
Traits and Titles Coding (Azim)
Traits and Titles Research (Hross, Subutai)
Unit Coding (Sumskilz)
Wiki Content (Hross)
Re: Recruitment Policy
