10 players, actively recruiting, tags, etc... these are completely arbitrary requirements. Let's take a look at some professional clans, who play games for a living.
Most counter-strike clans, for instance, have five and ONLY five players. Occasionally you'll find a clan with one or two additional backup players. As far as esports goes, counter-strike is as big, real, and recognized as it gets.
Let's look at warcraft 3, probably the biggest and most played RTS game outside of Korea. Most clans participating in ESL's Wc3l league have less than 10 players. For instance, SK-gaming, one of the oldest and most professional clans in the world, has a warcraft 3 team of only 5 players, with which they play clanwars.
Let's look at CGS, which is probably the biggest and most professional e-sports league in the United States. CGS games are some of the only video games outside of korea to be actually broadcasted on television. You can find CGS on DirectTV channel 101. CGS plays several games. Every team in CGS has a CS1.6 team of 5 players, a DoA4 team of TWO players, a FIFA2007 team of ONE player. CGS pays a salary of around 30k USD a year. It's about as professional as it gets.
NONE of these teams are actively recruiting. Active recruitment is a joke. ALL good, competitive clans are invite-only. The standards of admission rise alongside the level of competitiveness. There is no serious, sponsored clan, that actively recruits.
TAGS are fine for a friendly bunch of guys who meet up to play a game or two, desperate to have an identity. But a SERIOUS, COMPETITIVE clan builds its reputation on SKILL and WIN RATIO. Whether clan members wear a tag or not is COMPLETELY irrelevant to how "legitmate" or "recognizable" a clan is. You get recognition from RESULTS. For example, LA Complexity, arguably the best CS:S clan in the world, often plays matches without the coL. tag. As another example, 4k.Grubby, a very famous warcraft 3 player, recently left 4-kings and joined MYM. Since then, he has played matches for MYM while STILL wearing his 4k. tag. TAG is irrelevant.
Now, I'm not saying that HuntingX's Sins clan is the next SK-gaming, or MYM, or LA complexity. Quite frankly, sins is not nearly at the level of starcraft, counter-strike, warcraft 3, etc. in terms of either casual or competitive play or number of players. However, many people wish to see sins evolve as a competitive game, instead of stagnate. Many people want to see the sins community grow bigger, rather than become divided. Having a list of "community-recognized" clans (with other clans being ignored) based on arbitrary and irrelevant criteria is a step towards the latter.
I dislike HuntingX as much as anyone. In fact, probably more so than most people, as I have the displeasure and misfortune of knowing him in real life. But he gets together a group of players and plays to win -- I don't care if your clan has tags, or has more than 10 members, or has Star-Wars inspired political and military rankings and elections. Sins is a game that ends in victory for one side and defeat for another -- playing to win is all that matters. His clan is more competitive and more professional than any sins clan I've seen. They don't post useless information on the forums. They frequently contribute to the strategy section. They frequently upload replays for everyone to scrutinize. When they play they use IRC and ventrillo, and they have the skill to back up their talk. He's trying to raise the level of the sins competitive community. But because many of you have personal issues with him, you find whatever excuse you can to ostracize his clan. It's like you guys really wanted to make a "Sins clans to avoid" thread, but couldn't because it would be too blatantly obvious. Instead, you decide to make a "community recognized clans" thread and find excuses to exclude people that you dislike. If this attitude is not discarded, then this thread and all of the OP's efforts are just a massive waste of time which will eventually divide the sins community.
