Welcomers' Guild Manual
This manual outlines a process for welcoming and onboarding new nation members in the Versutian Federation. This manual can be freely edited by any Welcomers' Guild member, so once you've finished reading and you've gone through the process, you might want to contribute more information to help other recruiters!
We'll need to find people to welcome, so recruitment is the first step in the Welcomers' Guild process. There are many different strategies for recruitment, each covered below.
Do you have any friends who play NationStates or would be interested in doing so? Refer them to join the Versutian Federation and have fun together.
Also referred to as word of mouth or organic recruitment, standard recruitment is one of the most accessible and basic ways of recruiting new members.
Find new nations being founded on the world activity page and then pick one you find of interest.
Go to their nation page and scroll to the bottom. Click the Write Telegram button.
Before you even begin to write your message, remember to mark the telegram for recruitment.
Use the Recruitment Telegram template for your message, adjusting the intro and signature as necessary (non-mass telegrams do not support %nation%, so you'll have to replace it with the nation's name). If you hold no government office, you may sign as a Welcomers' Guild member or officer depending on your WGP. After that, double check everything is correct (first impressions are everything), and then click send.
After standard recruitment telegrams, you can use mass telegrams to send recruitment telegrams to many nations at once. For each nation you send a mass telegram to, one stamp will be consumed if they receive your telegram.
In addition to being able to send to multiple nations at once, mass telegrams also allow you to view reports about your telegrams, showing their effectiveness and delivery rates.
They also allow you to use the %nation% placeholder, which will be automatically replaced by each recipient's nation name.
To send a mass telegram for recruitment, go to the Compose Telegram page and select your target recipients under the special section. It's recommended to use the new or refounded tags for recruitment.
Make sure to then mark the telegram as one for recruitment.
Finally, use the Recruitment Telegram template for your message, adjusting the signature as necessary. If you hold no government office, you may sign as a Welcomers' Guild member or officer depending on your WGP. After that, double check everything is correct (first impressions are everything), and then click send.
Eventually as a member of the Welcomers' Guild, you'll be granted access to the recruitment API, which is basically an automated mass telegram sending system. Every 180 seconds, a recruitment mass telegram will be sent out using someone's computer who is actively running the recruitment API.
Once you're eligible to do so, you'll need to install NationStates++ to use the Recruitment API. Unfortunately, NationStates++ does not work on Firefox so you'll have to use another browser in that case.
First, you'll have to enable showing recruitment progress. Go to your NS++ Settings and under NationStates Settings, check the Show Recruitment Progress box. If the progress bar gets stuck, you'll have to refresh the page to continue using the recruitment API. NationStates++ is unfortunately buggy, and this happens often. You may want an auto-refresher set to every 3 minutes.
If you'd like to get an overview of what's happening with recruitment, go to the NationStates++ Recruitment page.
Hourly contribution to recruitment effectiveness is used to calculate your earned WGP from the Recruitment API.
After you've gotten someone to join the region, it's time to welcome them. Preferably, you would welcome nations you personally referred but it's ok to coordinate with other Welcomers' Guild members on Discord to make sure everyone gets welcomed at a decent pace. You can find new joiners here. Always make it clear who you are welcoming, to help keep track of progress and prevent confusion.
So a new nation has just joined the Versutian Federation and has received the automated welcome telegram from the Minister of Immigration! Your job right now is to make sure they're taking everything in well and make sure they understand how to take advantage of the many things we have to offer!
Since there's so much to keep track of, not just for our region but assuming they're new to NationStates, there's a vast game they've yet to explore and fully grasp. Remember that our community is built on top of the game, and thus it's important to ensure new nations are able to enjoy and understand NationStates to improve retention. Talk to them about if they've joined the forums and Discord, sure, but also check their national happenings for their first few issues, see what choices they've had to make and perhaps use this as discussion material. You can make jokes about how ridiculous NationStates is sometimes, or you can give advice to them based on their goals for their nation. Make sure they feel at home and get an ok grasp of NationStates.
If you've managed to recruit a more senior member of NationStates, jump right into what we have to offer and how we complement NationStates features with our democratic elections, government positions and legislature.
Regardless of the nation, make an effort to get them signed up on the forums and joined on the Discord, but don't push it if they're not ready for it yet. Also, if they happen to be in the World Assembly, make sure you endorse them so they feel right at home.
So it's been a few days where you've been discussing the basics. Depending on where they're at, maybe explain some of the region's history. Give them examples of our systems giving interesting entertainment/drama/activity. Maybe tell them they can be a part of this history. Tell them how they can start to get involved. Also, make sure you integrate them into conversations on Discord. Sometimes people may have a hard time starting a conversation with unfamiliar people, so help them get into a discussion by asking for their input, or by asking them to explain something to the group that they told you about their nation (like a challenging or funny issue).
Towards the end of their first week, they should know about our roleplay, government, legislature and elections. It's a bonus if they consider to run for office or do some politics or RP.
You've slowly taken off the "training wheels" at this point. Your new citizen is hopefully becoming a lot more active thanks to your help, and now it's time to say goodbye (well, not really). As the end of the month approaches, recap the things you've discussed and also congratulate them on any accomplishments or activities they participated in. Tell them that you hope you really helped them get involved in the region and that you'll leave them to it, but you'll always be there for them in case they need help in the future.