Gaia Guilds 2

Status LevelOwner: Someone who started a Guild, or had ownership transferred to them. Has the power to Promote or Demote a member. And can choose the setting of Forum Access for each subforum.
Captain: The person in charge of a Guild, often the owner.
Vice Captain: If something happens to the Captain, such as a grizzly bear mishap, the Vice Captain can take over.
Crew Member: Someone appointed by the Captain or Vice Captain to help moderate the Guild.
[edit] Forum TypePublic Guilds have forums that can be viewed and posted in by anyone.
Private Guilds have forums that anyone can read, but where only members can post.
Hidden Guilds have forums visible only to members.
[edit] Categories:Users are able to narrow down their searches for a Guild to join, there are 21 total.
Anime / Art / Breedables / Commerce / Discussion / Entertainment / Foreign Language / Gaming / General / Interest Based / LGBT / Manga / Military/Army / Music / Political / Regional / Religion/Morality / Role Playing / Spam / Sports / zOMG!

edit GuildOn the Guilds Homepage there are seven buttons (eight if viewed by an Owner) that are visibly labeled:

Guild Home
View Forum
Guild Members
Moderator Panel
Report Guild
Recommend Guild
Quit Guild
View Guild Announcements
[edit] ControlsCrew Controls
Invite users
View current join requests
View logs
Captain Controls
Edit settings
Edit forums
Change ownership
Send Guild Announcements
The cost of sending group announcements for a guild depends on how many members there are, sending an announcement will cost the guild some pieces of gold. The amount of gold may differ in the event that new members join the guild. Guidelines for using the announcement system:

rules copied verbatim

Please do not include html tags in your message.
Maximum size of message is 1500 characters
Maximum size of subject is 128 characters
Adult content (above a "PG-13" level) is not allowed on gaia gold. Anyone reported for violating this rule may have his/her membership revoked.
Gaia will not refund your gold for messages sent.
Only one group announcement may be sent per day per guild, no exceptions.
edit CriticismNaturally, as with everything else on Gaia, there has been criticism of the Guild system. Major complaints are that the Guilds cost 20,000 gold, which is quite a lot for a non-item; however, this is offset by the fact that Guilds are meant to be started by a group of people, not only one person. There are also complaints about how each sub-forum costs 2,500 gold; even with donations, smaller guilds might have a hard time raising enough money. Glitches, of course come in, such as when Guild searching went down, and a few days when Guilds were completely down.

Another criticism is the discrimination in some Guilds. Some Guilds are for users 18+ only, while others are for religious or ideological groups, and some are discriminatory against other beliefs or Guilds for petty reasons or just because they can get away with it. Because a Guild is just a group of people gathered around one subject, such behaviour usually isn't frowned on by the admins.

Some minor criticisms include the amount of time it takes to manage a guild, the gaia gold  it takes, and the fact that if a moderator invites all of his friends to join a guild, it can get spam-filled and messy because of abuse of trust. Another concern is that some members post inappropriate things on the Guilds, hoping they won't get caught because of the large amount of guilds.