Invitation Etiquette

Yahoo provides a tool for you to invite people to your club, but what are the guidelines for use of this tool?

The guidelines to invitations are a matter of common sense and courtesy. Obviously, when the guidelines are based on such ephemeral standards, opinions can vary quite widely on what is or is not acceptable. 

I think it's safe to say that most people will agree that it's not OK to invite anybody and everybody. While invitations are not generally considered spam, they can easily become spam (as in mass and unsolicited...). You should have some reason to believe that the person you are inviting would be interested in joining your club. 

There are many methods for finding people to invite, the easiest is to use the directory and the interest listings that Yahoo provides. Just a few words about doing a directory search. When you punch in a keyword and a whole bunch of names comes up, this doesn't mean that everyone who's profile comes up should be invited. You should click on each name and view their profile. Here's why: say you punch in the word "environment" into the search engine. You will get a list of every Yahoo member in the searchable directory who has the word in their profile. Click on a profile and you might see something like this under Hobbies: protecting the environment....
You might also see something like this somewhere in the profile: I'm in my environment when I am fixing computers.
The first person is most likely going to appreciate your invite; the second person most likely would not. So, do be sure you look at the profiles that come up when you do a search. These cautions don't apply to people in the interest listings; they have either signed up under that interest knowingly or joined a club under that interest. 

Another method that some people like to use is finding people in other clubs in your category or clubs with a similar subject to yours. While this is a good method, I think there are limits. 

Some people may disagree, but I think it is not acceptable to go to a club (especially a large one) and invite every single person on the contact list. (Exceptions to this might include dead clubs.) Aside from the fact that it is rude to the founder and the members who may not appreciate your invite, this method has a great downfall. You may get the good members, but you will also get the bad. If you are going to use another club to find your members from, you would do well to have a look through that club to see if there are any members you definitely would not want in your club. Like I said, some people don't agree that it's rude to use a club's contact list and invite everyone on it, but there is a tiny blurb related to this in the Clubhouse, entitled Club Etiquette. The quote is particularly appropos.