TToF has been a social shell for the better part of a decade. We don't actually "recruit" people, and this is for the better. As soon as we start actively looking for people, we would have to develop rules and some kind of framework that rewards efforts of unequal players "equally," like all the other linkshells bound together by a common goal rather than friendship.
If we kept our current rules and invited people randomly, we'd end up with spite lotting, people lotting for jobs they don't play, terrible players lotting things over good players, etc. I'd rather not do what little endgame there is to do than deal with some kind of point system ***. This is why I made a separate Legion shell (Taruwaru), because I was afraid it would go poorly and I didn't want those denigrate outsiders in TToF. Fortunately I was too lazy to make a point system for Taruwaru either, so I recruited very conservatively and most of them ended up being a good fit in TToF anyway (and thus got pearled). This gave us enough (high-quality) players to do Adoulin content comfortably and casually.
This is our third or fourth recruitment thread and as far as I know we have only pearled one person from all of them. That person was a sweet innocent little Galka, and he eloped a few weeks after being pearled (true story). We never heard from him again. So, as serious as we may be, we are not particularly serious about recruiting people and I am adamantly opposed to recruiting people that I feel would destroy the atmosphere of the linkshell.
PS. Galkas are terrible and I won't even pearl my own mule because he's a Galka. Frodo was an exception.
PPS. What you portray as an arbitrary decision to kick people based on their names is actually part of my holy quest for alphabetic linkshell list balance. This quest predates this thread by years, but you can see evidence of it sprinkled
throughout my posts.
PPPS. The real reason I made linkshell recruitment threads was to try and get people to spam Artemas with tells.
Most of that is true.
On the rare occasion, new mules or people will get pearled, there will be a rash of 'Who the *** are you?s' (or in Skype, verbal "Who the *** are you?s). The false hostility (genuine on Phaffi/Ben/Byrth's parts) is just a screening process. I cannot even begin to tell you the number of tells our members get after being spam checked and then inquiries are made of whether we are recruiting. Always, we say no. And then mock you. We're not interested in people that are looking for what we can do for them. We know we can do it. We've done everything. Successfully. Efficiently.
Any issues that have ever arisen come from attendance problems (many are long time players so busy lives have grown around these characters), not failure to follow basic instructions (though Phaffi can barely read).
What can you do for us? Are you good humored? Are you mature? Are you not a ginger? These are important traits to have.
The last person we pearled (I invited) was Rooks. How did this happen? I observed him during some incredibly dismal pick up fracture runs, back when people only did Ceizack and 7k was stellar.
I recognized immediately he'd be a good fit.
There were some initial tells to me about 'who is this guy? he doesn't even have his license, Lisa', etc.
Then he posted this:
Facebook is the place for selfies, man.
In response to a picture Ben posted and ever since then, he's been welcome with open arms.
But not all of us are hateful, shriveled shells of what used to be people. Kathee and Aery (in sharp contrast to her blood thirsty MPK ways against Byrth and Ben.. hey, she's never MPK'd
me.) are the very souls of kindness and warmth. Their goodness is so vast, the rest of us struggle to keep the balance with our rottenness. Though Rooks is sorta not evil. Think more Evil Light.
And yes, every Galka has been beyond terrible with the exceptions of:
Gosgorganos, Msterbama and Zeb.
And yes, Byrth does actively complain if the LS list is too lopsided alphabetically.
And yes, he loves when I would get bombarded with tells from people asking to join, when they are in full pink, auction house ninja gear. I think every time I get a tell like that, his heart grows .3 times its size.