So we asked you, our community, to help pay some of the bills. Your response was amazing. Our donors brought in hundreds of dollars that will keep our servers going for several months. To all the guys who put cash in the GC stocking, we wanted to say:THANK YOU!
Of course, people didn't just step up with their wallets. In the past year, we've seen so many of you contribute your time and energy to GC. We have a sexier website, brilliantly run armies, a well-running tournament, exciting front page news, working ABC (!!!), etc. because people put their blood, sweat, and tears into it. Special thanks to the TA's and both HC's for making C4 the most successful campaign we've had in years.
Seeing how much of the community has stepped up in different ways, we thought this would be a good time to make some changes to recognize that contribution. But before I explain those, we need a short history lesson.
HOW GLOBAL CONFLICT IS RUN
GC was founded about 10 years ago by guys who played at another tournament and didn't like how it was run. The admins there just made a bunch of rules and didn't pay attention to their members. Around the same time, there were lots of new pay-to-play tournaments appearing, where you had to pay $5 a month to participate and you could pay extra to pick a certain side. We have never been like that. We would rather be a community where anyone from around the world is welcome, where everybody wants to play with everybody else, and anyone can get involved in making decisions and helping out.
Some of those founder guys are still around here -- if you see Tubesteak, Ghoul, or Brummie in your squad, you should thank them for inventing this whole thing
Those founders made up the original Executive Senate, and over the years they added on some new people: here's the list of all of us. The "execs" are the community leaders. We keep an eye on the money supply, moderate the forums, and try to make sure the GC community is always healthy and stable.During the BF2 days, when not all the execs were active, we created the Tournament Administrators. Here's the list of our current TA's. They are responsible for running the tournament day to day: keeping the servers up, updating the campaign map, enforcing the fair-play rules, etc. TA's have one of the hardest jobs in GC, which is why we look for mature people with high command experience. TA's and Generals are selected by the Executive Senate, based on the advice of the outgoing TA/HC's. If you think you have what it takes for either job, you can contact us.
NEW POSITIONS
The last piece of this puzzle is our community. There are lots of you who don't have a formal title outside your army, but still contribute a lot and have plenty of wisdom about how GC should work. To recognize those people and involve them more in decisions, we are creating a new group called Supporting Members. (In the past, this was called the "Votable Members," but it died because for several years nobody voted on anything
).Anyone who gives money to GC will become a Supporting Member. They will get a sexy badge on the forums and a smaller but still sexy badge on teamspeak. We're also creating a new Supporting Members Forum. This is a private forum where people who've contributed to GC can talk about the future of the community. The point of this forum is for people who've been at GC for a few campaigns and built up respect for each other to be able to discuss things, without random new people coming in and flaming each other.
Since we need cash to survive, Supporting Membership will be mainly based on donations (which you can always send us here). However, we reserve the right to fudge things. Members who've contributed a lot over many campaigns but don't have the money to donate can be added, and the opposite is true too: if you're disrespectful in the SM forum, no matter how much money you sent us, we'll throw you out
We'll also be formalizing a few new Committees. We already have small groups that do things like organizing fun days between campaigns, or doing news for the front page, or updating our website and ABC. Those won't really change, we'll just be cleaning up their forums and making it easier for GC members to get involved in them. We'll also be setting up some new committees, like a Welcoming Committee to get new people set up. Stay tuned for more information about those.
Last of all, we'll be merging some of our existing forums and creating a new Suggestions Forum open to anybody. This is a place where anybody can give their feedback: about the campaign system, the website, the maps and settings we use, our game servers, etc. The only rule is that it's for suggestions about the future only: if you want to complain about the current campaign, the place for that is your army forum.
Thanks again for everything you guys do for GC,
Cheesy, on behalf of the Executive Senate
