JoF Academy (JoFA) is an autonomic institution used for recruiting first established in February 2010. It's main feature is advanced member filtering process, filtering out applicants who are not worthy of entering the clan. Academy was created, because a smarter method of filtering out un-worhty applicants was needed. Without the academy, the amount of random short-term members would increase significantly, as it has happened in the past. Before the introduction of the academy, random strangers would come knocking on the door to ask for acceptance only to mysteriously vanish without a trace. Academy was opened only during the most active periods during the year, during the less active periods the classic hopeful system was used. Academy is being run by the Instructors (Low Councilars of JoF) along with the Leaders.
About the Academy
The academy is looking for active well-mannered and behaved members who would like to have fun and spend time with the clan, but are also not afraid to act mature and serious when needed. Another thing greatly valued at JoF is a long and meaningful stay. Such a thing remain easier to say than actually carry out, which is why the academy instructors will be patient when judging new applicants. While skills are no requirement at the academy, applicants that lack greatly in this field will be offered basic dueling and force power teaching by the academy instructors. To clear things out; it does not mean that an applicant who possess great skills will stand a better chance at being accepted at the academy, than an applicant who lack basic skills - attitude and general manners are what matters the most at the academy. For more information, please proceed to the requirements section.
In-game Academy tag
Members of the JoF academy are required to wear their rank and academy tag when on the official server as well on foreign servers. It is required that the academy applicants show their adept tag as well as their name. Members of the academy are asked to use the following academy tag template when coming up with their in-game tag:
- {JoFA}Name{Adept} or {JoFA}Adept Name
It is up to the academy applicants themselves whether or not they want to wear this exact style of tag or create their own, as long as the tag requirements are met. Use of special letters and characters are allowed.
The filtering process
The way the academy works is that anyone willing to join must apply on the designated academy forums. They will then be asked to fill out the application form and then wait for an academy instructor to get back to them. They will then be asked to hang around the clan for a while and prove that they are made of the right material to be let into the actual clan. The applicants are from now on required to wear the academy tags and adept rank. After a certain amount of time the academy instructors will then voice their opinions on the newcomers to fellow academy instructors and the clan leaders. It will then be decided whether or not the applicants are let into the clan or not; if the latter then the applicants have the possibility of re-applying. The lucky applicants that are accepted into the clan by the academy instructors will then be transferred to the actual clan.
Requirements
Everyone may apply for academy membership, however, the academy instructor's reserve the right to decline any applicants application. When first accepted into the academy by the academy instructors the applicant is asked to follow the rules of conduct put forward by the academy instructors. Apart from being asked to follow the rules put forward by the academy, the applicant is asked to display a good and civilized attitude and be well behaved and mannered. There are no requirements regarding skills. Last but not least, the applicant is required to show sufficient activity on both the official clan server as well as on the academy currently used platform (forums/app). These simple requirements are to be followed by potential applicants, but please note that the requirements may not be limited to these only and that an academy instructors word is final on any matter.
The Academy Instructors
There are currently 5 academy instructors: Abdel, Darren, Foongus, Mar, Fuzzy
It is up to the academy instructors to judge each applicant and decide whether or not to let them in. It is the academy instructors' job to always keep an eye on the applicants and observe them during various activities as well as just during social and casual talk. Furthermore, the academy instructors have to voice their opinions on the applicants to the leaders who then decides who to let into the clan.
Revolutionizing the Academy
After over a year of service as an Instructor, Darren, annoyed by the large amounts of messy paperwork, came up with an idea to simplify the paperwork on forums by developing a simple web utility that could read applications from the forums and keep track of adepts' forum and server activity without any effort. App started to be used in February 2014 with great reception from the fellow Instructors. Even though the app was a great help, it still wasn't ideal and lot of painful paperwork remained to be done by hand. After the academy closed in July 2014, Darren came up with an idea to evolve the web utility into a whole application system, that would require minimal effort from Instructors to manage and keep track and relieve applicants from creating forum accounts, posting a copied app etc, ultimately abandoning the user-unfriendly academy forums platform completely. Despite Aldro Koon's doubts about the project, feeling that "it sounds too good to be possible to make", first early version was introduced in October 2014 and met with large success. During the following weeks the app was finished to a fully working version and along with re-opening the Academy became fully operational and continued to be developed further.