I suggest putting up a board that allows players to apply to a guild, without an officer or guild master to invite said player. The guild would have its own Spiral Uplink mailbox of sorts that contains applications by players. Applications would have multiple fields that can be filled to entice the guild to invite the player, and the guild can also require certain fields to be filled for the application to be valid. Fields can include, but are not limited to: Name (always required and is auto filled and unchangeable), knight rank, favorite weapon/armor (a drop down list of all currently owned gear with up to 3 input slots), knight screenshot (a preview of the knights armor and weapons currently equipped, similar to the character or inspection page), previous guilds, and about me section. the guild Uplink can be checked by an officer or guild master at the control hub inside the guild hall.
This could be done in one of two ways.

-have a room that can be purchased and installed into a guild hall that has a bulletin board that has information about that guild on it. this could work similar to the guild wiki pages, as it has player input data that describes the guild in any way that the guild wants. There will also be a section that allows players visiting to apply to the guild.

-have a bulletin board posted in the garrison next to the guild hall entrance that has a list of all guilds that have open applications. this would work similar to the bulletin board inside the guildhall, but does not require the hall to be open to the public to be viewed by outside players, and also does not require the purchase of an additional room

If both methods are implemented, there would have to be some difference between the two. For example, there would be more space to talk about your guild if you purchase your own room, as opposed to simply posting on the board in the garrison. Possibly even allow steam users to have a link to the actual wiki page of the guild, if that have one.
Once an application has been sent to a guild, that player may not send in another application for another week to prevent players from spam applying to guilds

Also, the Guild Uplink mailbox could lead way into future updates, like sending messages or gifts to guilds, or in some other way increasing the importance of guilds in the game.

Please post any suggestions or changes to help improve this idea.
EDIT: just like to add that many larger guilds use a similar method on the forums, so the idea in itself doesn't seem so bad