Vouching FAQ

Vouching
One of the advantages of membership at TCE, is that you can vouch for anyone else who can not join through normal means. Join by invitation seems to be in vogue on the web at the moment, nice to know that we led the charge last year

A few points to remember:
We have membership rules for your benefit. We don’t allow the public in to cut down on noise, recruiters and HR so you’re not hassled about jobs you don’t want, Marketing to cut down on senseless spam, management so you can speak freely, and journalists because most of them simply want gossip and will re-print anything you post without blinking. Please consider this before you vouch for a new member; we perform only limited vetting on vouches.

Q & A

Q: I know people who aren’t in the industry but I know they aren’t trolls, can I vouch for them?
A: You can vouch for anyone, but we’d prefer to have people who conform to our standing rules regarding industry, management and job types.

Q: What happens if I vouch for someone who isn’t in the industry?
A: Nothing, as we said we’d prefer you didn’t do that but nothing happens until they screw up.

Q: What happens if someone I vouch for trolls, breaks the rules or gets banned for another reason?
A: If the vouch is someone in the industry, and fits in with our other membership rules nothing happens. If they’re a ‘legal’ member and they screw up, it’s on their head not yours. If the vouch is not in the industry, management or in someway doesn’t fit in with our membership rules we’ll ban you as well as them. This is the only way we can discourage vouching against the rules but still allow it.

Q: Should you be sent links for industry info/Mobygames bio etc. for vouches?
A: Yes, always. It could be that the person you’re vouching for is just unemployed and so doesn’t have an email address. If so, you need to distinguish them as being a valid member so they’re future bad conduct, (if there is any), doesn’t reflect on you. Also see the number of people you can vouch for below.

Q: How many people can I vouch for?
A: If you’re vouching for people in the industry that fit in with our rules and you supply the usual links proving that, then there isn’t really a set limit. We’ll probably get suspicious if it’s anymore than 5 or 6 a year however. If you’re vouching for non-industry or those that don’t fit in with our membership rules, probably only 2 a year. We ask that you wait 6 months between vouch requests for people like this so we can watch them for bad behavior.

Q: Do you ever turn down vouches?
A: For some people, yes we do. Vouching was generally setup to let friends in who are currently unemployed. In those cases we’ll never turn them down. If you’re vouching for non-industry, management or others that don’t fit our membership rules it’s always at our discretion. We generally don’t turn them down unless they’re known to us and we’ve already turned them down for a personal application, but we reserve the right.

Q: I tried to vouch for my friend, but you turned them down. What else can I/they do?
A: You can ask us to put it up to a vote in the ‘Industry Professionals’ forum. We need a paragraph or so pleading their case and we’ll put up a vote for a few days. If the membership votes to let them in, we’ll grant them access.

Q: I tried to vouch for my friend and you turned them down. Will that reflect unfavorably on my membership, and do I have to wait 6 months before I can vouch for someone else?
A: No and no.

Q: I was vouched in myself, can I vouch others in?
A: If you’re industry and otherwise within the membership rules and simply didn’t have an industry email address then yes. There are no restrictions on your membership. If you otherwise don’t fit in with the membership the rules you can’t vouch for anyone else for a period of 6 months.

Q: Why are you such a bunch of Nazi’s about this?
A: Because the membership took a vote in 2003 about the membership policies and overwhelmingly voted to keep our heavy restrictions. We’re therefore simply trying to enforce the will of our membership as democratically as possible.

Q: Ok, I’m ready, how do I Vouch?
A: Simply PM Photon or Prof. Shminky or email us at webmaster@thechaosengine.com