How social is my raiding guild?

This post was inspired by Lissanna's post "How Social is your raiding Guild?", and it made me think about Frostwolves versus some of the other guilds out there.

Having been in Frostwolves for a long time, and being an officer, my view can sometimes be very different to how a non-officer guildie views it.  I have a high rank and high attendance so I often get to raid and often get first dibs on a new boss kill or attempt.  My view on raiding is that I love to be able to play with my friends but I hate people yelling at others about how they "fail" during a raid.  In fact, I know when I am in the raid or on Vent when that happens they person doing the yelling will get a dressing down themselves.  For as long as I have been here, we don't force people to change specs and we don't kick people for being bad players.  Sometimes the bad players have such good attendance that you can't help but reward them for turning up... which would not be happening in a serious raiding guild.

However, when you have socials, or very casual raiders who come and fill your spots, you really can't expect them to perform to raider/core standard.  How are they going to know which fights we are up to?  And how will they know what to expect when they've never done it before?

Roshii's mate asked him about our progression (they were 6/7 Heroic FL) and was surprised we tolerate such low dps/hps etc.  "Why don't you gkick them?" he asked.  Totally not a Frostwolves thing. 

And look how many socials we have!  These days we don't invite socials just for the sake of inviting, often the socials are friends, family or acquaintances of others (typically someone who has joined our guild, has a guildie who was also unhappy in that guild and wants to join our guild as well) who just want somewhere to hang while they're levelling (and of course getting the Guild Perks along the way).  We also have a few people we recruited to raid, but who were just not able to make raid times and have dropped down to social.

In our guild, there is nothing wrong with being a Social.  In fact, if you turn up on raid nights you may even get a raid spot if you're keen and attend regularly.  And if you perform well, you may well get upgraded to a raid spot if your attendance is high enough and your performance in the raid is adequate.  We do have a rank above social which is Casual Raider - this rank is given to those that we recruit for raiding and they are being "tried out".

So, social raiding guilds DO exist.  We are one.  Admittedly we don't raid very well when we raid with socials in the group as most of the time they are carried, but if it allows us to do a 25 man (an easyish boss) then we'll do it.