The ups and downs of a Guild

Every guild has its ups and down, i'm sure of it... the previous guild is was in had alot of downs as it was a casual guild with raiding wishes which just wasn't an option most of the time, but the guild offered a tight community feeling to most either way.
The current guild i'm in is quite stable.. we have highs but the downs are more semi-highs then lows as the mood is always pretty good and we have fun together wheter we kill a boss or have a wipenight.

These "downs" happen each summer it seems where people go on holiday and the remaining people try to struggle on and often won't get too far (due too raid unbalance or simply canceled raids)... which is understandable ofcourse.
For some reason this time the summer state of mind didnt leave some people, loads still come and go as they please and leaving their guildmates hanging which results in frustrated people who take a break and by that make things even worse. It's kind of a Domino effect.
We have good nights where we make some serious progress on bosses and 1-shot bosses on farm, but we have to cancel raids aswell or just wipe endlessly on the boss we killed on the first try the week before. Still we have fun on those wipe nights (its not just about epix) but there should be some achievement aswell as people aint paying for 20g repairs and 40g pots every day for this kind of fun.

I must admit i'm getting frustrated with this at times aswell... as i am just 1 councillor of a bigger group i can't make decissions on my own, majority have to agree with me. Yesterday i got so fed up with things i suggested we just take a weeks break of raiding and to tell people to get rid of that holiday spirit and pick up their pace, kind of a shock and awe effect i was hoping.
While one councillor feared some people might leave due to this i wasnt so scared of this, an other councillor said we would at least know where we would stand. Doing something like this would at least show we (the officers) are taking things seriously.

Another idea was to reevaluate ranks, we have Honored raiders which are our Raiders and Friendly which are our backup-players. (besides this we have Neutral which are casual, Revered for our Classleaders and Exalted our the Councillors.. funny side-step: Ex-ALT-ed are the councillors alts :) )
Anyways.. taking a look at people's ranks might be a good wakeup sign aswell, getting people to pick up their act to keep their rank or get a better one. This is what we are discussing now, shall we look at the next 3 weeks (and warn our members) or simply look at the previous 3 months (including the holiday) and base the ranks on that.. at least rewarding those people who díd show effort.

Being a councillor/officer is a crummy job.. did i mention that before?